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.