The Glory of Work

I've thought a lot about work and the Gospel lately. I've had three months of overnights, 10 hours a night, alone with these thoughts.

What did God create work for? I mean, from the first pages of the Bible God works and then lets us work what He created. The Psalms tell us that He took great delight in creating creation. So: He created us to work and find satisfaction and delight in it. And, like everything else in life, He intended it for His glory and for our good.
So where did we go wrong?
In those first few pages, in Genesis 3, when we let our pride take place of our love. From that point on God said that we would find toil in our work. It would be frustrating. But it's still for His glory and our good.
So what do I do with that?
I go back to the only job where I've been equally satisfied and frustrated: GAP Ministries.
It's not that I didn't find some satisfaction in being an overnight guy at Circle K. And it's not that I can't clean toilets for the glory of God. I did and I can. But when I think about finding lasting satisfaction AND the glory of my Maker I think of my work at GAP Ministries. Being able to pour into those kids and being poured into by the staff... It is a family. I shouldn't have walked out on family.
We're all created for something. We're all intended to find delight in our work. When I think about what it takes for me to use this TV tray I'm using to type this: someone had to go get the wood, someone had to create the tools to cut the wood down, someone had to pave the roads to get the wood, someone had to create the vehicle to use those roads, someone had to know how to put it together, someone had to create the tools to do that well, someone had to package it, someone had sell that package to a store, someone had to stock it, and I had to have the money to buy it through the job I have that requires all kinds of other people doing their jobs well to make my job go well.
All that to say find delight in your work, whatever it is, and pray that God would show you where you can be most satisfied in your work for His glory and your good...and to be joyfully frustrated.

Wasting Time to Find It

I've been doing a lot of things I don't need to do - i.e. writing this right now - to avoid doing the things I want to do - i.e. writing other things. Or doing laundry to avoid doing dishes (though that's understandable this morning as I did 4 hours worth of dishes at work last night).

Why do we do that?

Why do I do that?

I think about what I want to write: I want to continue writing a story. The story is getting harder and harder to come back to because it gets worse and worse for it's characters. And worse still, I have no idea what will happen to them. Well, you say, how do you not know if you're writing their story? Well, easy. I'm not writing their story, they're simply taking me along for theirs.
But these are made up characters, aren't they?

Aren't they?

Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, I waste time to find it. I think about that plot line, or that unfinished bridge to a song, or that chord structure that's just missing something and instead of writing it out, playing with it, or just having the confidence and conviction to maybe just let it be what it is I instead feel inadequate to be able to do these things well. So I do something else; something less dangerous than plummeting into self examination to make something beautiful and honest.

But isn't that what that last paragraph was? Not even close. I want to write (and live) with a vulnerability that makes both you and me uncomfortable, because I know what that's worth. Like Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 3 we contemplate the Lord's glory with unveiled faces, making us bold and making us free. What wonder is that! Does that mean that everything is put on the table to talk about? Does it mean I sit in my sin for a while? Does it mean I confess to you my every stumbling block?

Yes and no.

It means you have the power in my life to call me out in my sin and I have the power to sit in it and be humbled by God's good grace that I should have friends good enough to let me see those blocks of mine and point me back to the One who will crush all of them. To point to the Truth that we serve a God who suffered a terrible death.  A death that was so agonizingly painful that a word had to be made up for it's pain: excruciating. One so unbearable that His own mother didn't recognize him when they were done with Him. Yet, we find in Genesis 3 that that death was just a scratch on the heel compared to what Jesus did to the Accuser in that moment. Why? Because Jesus brought Life out of death. Jesus brought Truth out of the accusations. Jesus brought Light out of the shadows.

Jesus brought me out from my sin.

And sometimes, I'm scared He'll stop doing that. Sometimes I don't want to be open about my sin or think about it because I sometimes simply don't trust God enough to bring me out of my sadness over it. I'm scared He'll leave me depressed over my iniquity.

But then I come back to remember what it's worth. To remember those moments where I was confronted with my sin and it was good. I saw love in those moments, even if I felt like I needed to run out of the room. But isn't that the most terrifying thing to see? Scarier than feeling sad, scarier than feeling guilt, scarier than feeling judged, scarier than feeling alone...is feeling genuinely loved. You can run from everything else, but love? Good luck.


I guess I should wrap this up and stop distracting myself from confronting fictional (and non-fictional) sin. Maybe I can get those characters of mine to learn the same lesson.

New Chapter One

Ancestor’s Tales

                There were worn paths throughout our backyard marked by trees that were lifeless, and there was little grass or soft ground. There was, however, lots of dirt that, during the monsoon season would turn into sloppy mud. The land was open because of the scarce trees but secluded because it was so far away from the marketplace.

             It was my home.  It was Ambigu.

 The forest (if you could call it that) outside our backyard seemed to go on for lifetimes; yes, lifetimes. It was as if all the stories of my ancestors, and those even before them, came out at night to let their tales be told. I could hear the pain and sorrow, laughter and joy, birth and death of each and every one of them. Or at least that’s what I told myself when I heard the creeping animals and the sounds of the actual death from the One War.

I had come out to check on how close the War was to us.  As I heard the screams closer than I’d like, I had imagined I heard my Great Great Grandfather tell me about the time he had come across logors when he was just a few years older than me; maybe twenty at the oldest. Logors are like owls with fangs and wings like bats. They weren’t big but they were violent and known for their speed. When the Maker created them, I’m positive he used a portrait of the Destroyer.

Anyway, Grandfather Squared (as I called him in my head) had been wandering this same forest and there it was just waiting for him. He looked up in the tree and met the logor’s red eyes with mostly courage, but a fear of death and maybe a bit of pride. It was just an animal, after all. He drew his sword in case it decided to swoop in for an attack and kept walking. No use in making himself a target, he thought. The logor leapt from the tree down in front of Grandpa Squared. He took a step back and put himself in an offensive stance, like a dog ready to pounce on an intruder. He charged his sword at the creature and it flew above and around him. He turned quickly but not quickly enough because the logor flew in his face and bit him on the right cheek. He fell to the ground and dropped his sword.

 Grandpa Squared didn’t take kindly to that. He suppressed the pain of the bite, ignoring the fact that the dirty thing may have given him rabies or something like it, and reacted quickly while the logor thought it had a chance. With his sword out of reach, he took the nearest broken branch and swung it at the logor. The poor thing (and I use poor loosely) flew farther than Grandpa Squared imagined it could. With that kind of swing, he thought, he should have been a professional taddiwagon player.

He felt a kind of pride he had not felt in all his life. He came across danger – death even – and fought his way out. It was a story I’m sure he told a thousand times.

It was a story I hoped to never have.

I walked along the beaten trail of the forest mostly in my own head but being aware of what hid in the trees and what direction the sounds of the War were coming from.  As I started thinking of another ancestor I started to become aware of being followed. I turned back to look, but saw nothing. I decided to go a bit off the trail to see if my imagination had gotten the best of me. I walked off the path about ten footfalls and then sprinted for another ten behind a tree. I looked out from the tree and saw my follower.

“Tessie!” I yelled. She jumped as high as the logor must have flown. “Tessie, get over here!” I started walking towards her doing my best to look angry. She shouldn’t have been out here, she was only seven.

“I’m sorry, Caleb. I really am.” She knew she was in trouble when we got home so she used her best little innocent girl voice. “I just wanted to see what you do out here all the time. It’s like you’re looking for danger.” Actually, I wanted to tell her, I was doing the exact opposite. Mom and Dad always spoke of the One War one day coming all the way out to our part of the land. Out of my own self-concern I tracked the War, marking on a map the new developments.  “No, Tessie, I’m not,” was all I could give her. She was too young to understand the danger of the War. “I’m sorry to have made you follow me. Let’s get you home before we get in trouble.” She nodded at me and we started walking.

Then, we heard the boom.

It was unlike anything I had heard before. I couldn’t hear out of my ears but I could see Tessie crying presumably very loudly. What was it? That couldn’t be a gun, not one I’d ever seen anyway.

I got up and went to grab Tessie, who was up and walking towards the path and then I got knocked off my feet by another, much larger, boom. This one I didn’t hear but felt the vibrations below me. I saw Tessie get pushed into a tree by the shock.

I tried again to get up but it was hard to find the strength. I counted in my head to five to retry getting up:  One… My legs weren’t working... two…  My hearing was gone… three… my brain was not having complete thoughts… four… my body was just giving up, fading slowly to unconsciousness. I cursed at myself and tried to focus on keeping an eye on Tessie. Last I remember she was crying at the stump of the tree, and I could feel on the ground more footfalls.

Five. 

Nothing New

It's been a while since I posted anything on here. Partly due to my job with having 9-12 kids to take care of every other week for a job, and partly because I've been writing other places and not sharing it.
BUT - now that I have a decent amount of time off and not four days a month, I'll be doing a lot more writing -- but I can't promise it'll be here. Not that anyone reads this silly thing anyway.
So, let me give you the LD, as some kids call it (albeit those kids existed in 1995) on what I'm doing nowadays.

First and foremost: Jill and I are closing on a house. We are 90% there and praying nothing screws us over. This is the 4th house we've made an offer on and hopefully will be the one that doesn't fall through. I'm sick of looking for houses. And this one also the most beautiful we've seen. It's not a great part of town. It's on a little street in Marana with neighbors who, as we've witnessed both times we were there, fight pretty openly and loudly and play lots of country music. Do the two coincide? I think so. But even so, what a great opportunity. I've been praying a lot lately about discipleship and what role prayer actually plays in my life. My answer was a sad one. So I'm trying to be better at that. If our bodies are a temple, and Jesus said that the Temple was to be a 'house of prayer' then shouldn't that be where we start? Shouldn't that be how every day and every action start? And I've failed at that so badly. I repent of that and by the grace of Jesus, I'll become more apt to be more prayerfully minded.

Second - I'm working on a book that I posted the first chapter of a while back in here. That first chapter has been erased and replaced with something better (I think. I hope) and the shape of the story is coming to me now. I'm 8,345 words in and enjoying it. Didn't think that would happen. It's taken on a whole different shape from when I started. I don't know who said it, and I couldn't find it anywhere on the Interweb, but they said "The only original line in a story is the first one. The rest writes itself." I'm finding that to be true. I find myself wondering how these people will react to certain things and I'll tell you: I have no idea.

Third- I'm really, really, really ready to record new music. I've got a good dozen songs ready to lay down. My favorite of which is called Nothing New, which I think will be the title of the CD when it's done. It's a worship song about worship songs and it's pretty epic (again, I think. And hope.) And we traded in my accordion for a hammered dulcimer, which you should watched be played by Rich Mullins here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ign854UiTk

That's all.

Goodnight.

Fantasy...I hate it but it's easy

About a month ago my wife informed me I have no value for imagination because I don't like fantasy books or movies. The argument came down simply to that I'm too mush of a realist and I need to expand my mind. No true. I have great imagination. My imagination is on the glory and beauty that God has already created and I don't need to live in Narnia. I need to live in this world with Jesus. I value very much the imagination of God and stand in awe of His wonders. He made a fish that shoots lasers out of its butt. Take that Tolkien.
However, mainly to prove I can write fantasy and it's wayyy easier than it looks, I started writing a fantasy novel. The beauty of fantasy is I can say whatever I want you have to take it as truth. You're already going in knowing it's ridiculous, because it's fantasy. In a "real world" novel you have to consider the real ramifications of actions and life. If you don't people get angry; think it's too Hollywood, or get like me and say "that would never happen." That doesn't happen in fantasy as far as I can tell. The impossible is the reality so just write whatever you want.
Anyway, so here's what I got so far. It's not much but I got it all planned out. Just need to take the time to do it. As a side note, my wife enjoyed it and said she'll laugh at me when it's actually good and that because it's good she wonders if all fantasy writers started out making fun of fantasy. Who could blame them?

 I never know what to make of nights like these. The lands outside are damp, for it storms here often, has for years. I’m told it didn’t used to be that way but I suppose if you never experienced it any other way you don’t mind. The night air is humid with a smell that’s at once familiar but always takes you by surprise:  rain mixed with miles and miles of dirt. We see trees in the distance, like we see ants on the ground. They’re in the Salt Lands and quite simply, it’s just too far away. Don’t get me wrong, we have bushes, and even small trees and an array of different plants for different purposes but nothing like what the Salt Lands must possess.

Anyway, what makes tonight so strange is the silence.  It’s never silent.  Every night I lay here I hear lignats, those dirty poisonous lizards, who, if you’re lucky enough to see them, will fly from tree to tree with the webbing that stretches from the front legs to the hind legs.  They make a sound that’s unmistakable, and unidentifiable. All I know is that it only makes the sound when it’s killed something; the sound of death.  Though it sends chills up my spine when I hear them they are hardly the worst creatures out there. There are draffles, trihorns, and slingerdorfs. If my little sister was not sleeping beside me peacefully I would tell you the horrors of these creatures but I’m just not that cruel. Plus, she is a light sleeper and makes terrifying noises of her own when she’s woken up. 

Of all the noises that are absent tonight the one that brings hope, but also scares me, is the absence of the War.

    “Caleb?” Apparently my sister was not asleep. She’s good at pretending.

                “Yeah,”

                “When did it start?”

                “When did what start?”

                “The One War,” She must have noticed the silence, too. “When did the One War start?”

                I took in a deep breath. “Oh, Tessie, it’s been going on before I was born.”

                “Before mom and dad were born?”

                “No it wasn’t that long ago.”

                Another voice invaded our conversation. “What are you trying to say, Caleb?” It was my mother, standing in the doorway to our room. She smiled that old smile, the one that told me my foot shaped mouth had done it again.

                “Just that the War is not that old..."

                “And we are?” And again.

                “You know what I meant,” my face was turning red now. “I know it started the year I was born and I’m only seventeen."

                My mom sat down on Tess’ bed across from me. She played with Tess’ black hair and said, “ Seventeen years is a short life, but a long war.” Somehow, I thought she wasn’t talking about the War anymore.

                “What started it, mama?” Tessie was always curious. At only ten she had the right to be but mom always told her that ‘curiosity killed the kalawhacker.’ None of us had ever seen a kalawhacker; we just knew we’d kill one if we got too curious. This revelation didn’t faze my sister.

                “Like most wars, honey, it was over something others couldn’t have. Sometimes it’s oil, food, land or sometimes even a fight over the Creator but in our case it’s a tunnel.”

                “That’s it?” Tessie was as confused as I was. I had never asked about the war, like most people I just accepted its reality.

                “Unfortunately,” She looked outside, a glaze coming over her eyes. “It’s supposedly not an ordinary tunnel. It’s never been proven it exists but some have claimed to have seen it and even walked through it.” She stopped for a moment. I had questions I wanted ask like ‘where were those people’.  There was a clear debate in her eyes of whether to continue. “The tunnel,” she continued, “is said to lead into another world; one that far surpasses the beauty of this one. No one quite knows what that means, though. No more war? No more death? Colors we haven’t seen? Knowledge we can’t obtain? It’s all very silly, sweetheart.” 

                I chimed in now: “Do you think it exists?”

                “Does it matter? If the Maker wanted us in that world, we’d be in that world.” As simple and beautiful as her faith was, that wasn’t a sufficient answer for me so I asked again. Her smile faded and then she said, “Sometimes I’d like to believe it does. I’d like to believe that we’re not it; not all He made. If we are… then we’re in a lot of trouble.”  I stared at her, and then asked where the people were that walked through the tunnel. “We never saw them again. We all wanted to believe they were right. That they were in the other world.”

                “The truth though is that they’re—“

                She cut me off: “Still searching.”

                I locked eyes with her. “Right.”

                Tessie hadn’t said a word, only looked from mom to me. She broke the tension. “Can you tell us a bedtime story?”

                Mom smiled, “I thought I just did. A secret tunnel to another world isn’t good enough for you? C.S. Stolken couldn’t make that stuff up.” Tess made a huff sound. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. I know he’s your favorite author. How ‘bout you go pick out one of his book and we’ll read a chapter?” Tess liked that idea and went and picked out the second of his three books:  The Chronicles of the Ring: Who has it now? 

Tracking

As I sit the write this, it is officially twenty-five minutes into Christmas Day. It is a weird feeling mostly because it came upon me so quickly. If I didn't have a pile of things behind me that now belong to me, but that I did not buy (I know I didn't steal them), well, then I just wouldn't believe it to be true. There are just an overage of things going on; for there's a wedding, buying a house, thoughts on how to start a church, school, work and why Christmas itself is a thing to be considered. And there it is: a consideration.

I was going to go to bed, but decided instead to see where my book is at this very moment. I was given a gift card for my birthday and decided on a book to use it on. Turns out, right now, it is in Illinois. What a funny thing we can do: Track packages. We can know exactly where they are and what will come of them and when at any given point of the day. Oh if it was only that simple! Do you know what lengths are taken for us to know? Me either, but I'm sure it's more work than necessary just so I can know where my book is in it's journey to me.

But yet, the Baby knew before He was here where He would end up. His life and death were tracked from the beginning of time (or before it, for They didn't know time) but He created it and entered into it anyway. Did he count the days, like on my tracking website? Three days until delivery it tells me. Why, yes, three days did delivery me. But Jesus, in that manger, nursing at his mother's breast, humbly accepting bare survival from a world He would save...oh what a knowledge. `Sleep in Heavenly peace, indeed! I don't know how He did, but I can assure you that I will because of Him.

 I don't like thinking about where I'm going. I'm glad I can't track my life. It's just simply too much to think about. But there is one destination I know I'll arrive at, even if I can't know how many days I have left. The beautiful truth for those who have given their lives to the Christ is this Earth is the closest to Hell we'll ever get. The sad truth for those who just can't believe that a  King would enter the world the way Jesus did and certainly can't believe He would leave the world the way He did...well, this Earth is the closest to Heaven they will ever get.

So tonight, I pray that you know the Baby as well as He knows you;. that you know that the Creator of the Universe, who became a helpless babe, came into His creation to restore us from our helpless estate.

Amen.

luxury.

I have four minutes before I should walking out my door for work. That means I have four minutes to enjoy luxury. Luxury of what? I could sit in silence. I could read for a few minutes. I have chosen to write about absolutely nothing. I have four--two--minutes of Sabbath. And Lord knows I need them and will enjoy them.
Sabbath has been on my mind lately; wondering when or if I'll ever make myself have one. It's the commandment that God spent the most words explaining in his Covenant with us. It's the one things we've struggled with since the Fall: How do we not do anything? Of course that's not the point of Sabbath. It's, to me, a day to reflect, a day to unproductive, but that doesn't always mean doing nothing. The greatest moments where I'm reeling in what God is doing and reflecting and relaxing are among people. Among God's people.
I've come to understand Sabbath, not a luxury but a commandment, is a luxury only because we've never done it. And I'm convinced it goes beyond just relaxing. I can enjoy Sabbath at a movie, or enjoying food and fellowship, or recording music, or doing this blog.
And I'm two minutes overtime, just when I might have had something to say. See? Work always wins.