Lord, Let me be your servant. Use me as you choose. Put me to doing; put me to suffering. Let me be employed for you or be put aside for you. Let me be full; let me be empty. Let me have all things; let me have nothing. With a willing spirit I freely surrender everything I am and everything I have to your plan for me. I make this covenant with you, O Christ, with all my heart and soul. You are my Savior and Redeemer.

-Unknown

It feels as if the dream has died, and the time has come for me to face the facts and realize the truth of the matter.

I no longer see a perfect American future; a perfect wife, a perfect marriage, perfect kids, a perfect job, in the perfect suburbs, perfectly happy.

No this dream has died.

The weight of the world is too much.

The giants before me have toppled over without a crash or a fight; simply a sigh as they breathe their last and disappear. With their towering figures gone, their shadows are gone too and the light illuminates so much that I never saw before; the slippery slope of temptation and the terrifying reality that none are immune.

And while the light has fought forth and revealed what was hidden in the black, the darkness has attacked too, taking those who were once well and casting them naked into the sea of sickness, pain, and death. Or leading them willingly to the well of youth and nudging them to dive in head first, only for them to realize the living water never was there. The dry rock bottom breaks both necks and reputations.

It seems that at the dusking of my day of innocence the black is winning, claiming what used to surround me, by force, by trickery, or by recruitment. As the night and reality settle, fear rises up. Will I be the next statue toppled? Will I dive willingly to my death into a dry well? Will I run towards an oasis in this desert only to realize that the mirage is not matter but a cavity? Simply a deep ravine calling me to jump into the cool blackness, to give in to the world and rest in its simple shadows.

But as my eyes grow dry and the kaleidoscope from tears dissolves into pure sight, a single light is seen in the moon-less sky; a single star reminiscent of one long ago.

A thin dirt path, well traveled but walked poorly, with many footprints on all sides and only one set steady in the middle, grows visible in the single-star light. Dust rises from it as I start to walk, yet I shake it from my sandals at the night around me as I begin to run. Is this where life truly begins? Where Joy and Suffering dance a beautiful waltz down this same path, a dance heavy with sorrow, yet filled with hope, building suspense to a climatic finale, only for them to keep their hands clasped together as they bow at the curtain call. Their fingers are interlocked. A keen eye will notice a wedding band on the left hand of each. I see the weight ahead. I have felt the weight behind. I see the dance ahead and know the end of the dance has come before my beginning, but its echoes beckon me on. I see many mirages and lies that look like life in the light of the night.

I run. East. On the dirt. Towards the sunrise.

The son who rose yesterday has yet to fail me. He shines. And he will shine. He will return in the morning. I will be there.

4/8/12 (Easter)

A poem:

My legs are broken, I cannot stand,

The battle is lost, I have no plan

The ship has sunk, my fears resound

The growing darkness shows no bounds.

Like a bird, hope’s flown away.

And I wonder if pain is here to stay

Death creeps in, as the golden leaves fall

And with trembling hands, I mourn it all

Yet you question still:

Can you wait just three more days?

I watched my father die that night

The twinkle in his eyes passed in the twilight

The warmth of life left his hands

And my heart questioned reprimand

My family continued its broken state

With anger and sadness we searched for our place

A lonely mother, a lost brother

What could I do to even begin to recover!

This all happened years ago,

Yet the weight continues to wound and grow

Who am I, if not a son?

And what of all things left undone?

Yet you question still:

Can you wait just three more days?

Alone I sat in a foreign land,

Actively seeking the living plan.

Yet no ears seemed to hear my cry,

And life seemed to be lived only to die.

Minute by minute I asked for a sign,

And prayed and hoped that one I would find.

To know that the Lord was real and true,

This was all I longed to do.

Like a criminal, my doubts encaged me

And my fears began to enslave me.

I was scared to return back home,

To try to live the full life I once had known

To see true friends and be in community,

What if they rejected me?

And some rejection I did meet,

Some of my dreams were met with defeat.

But distant, faint, and deep in the night

There was a shimmer of some future light

And for all this you once again asked me,

Can you wait just three more days?

He cried out, “why have you forsaken me?”

And “Please God, take this cup from me!”

Yet high on that cross, he lost his ground

And felt the wrath of God abound

The father’s gaze left the face of his son,

And all loving hope seemed foregone.

His body bore all mankind

And his heart yearned for a future time

Yet when his breath had breathed its last

It was then the walls all cracked

The curtain was torn, a bridge was built

Life was given for his blood was spilt.

Yet this son of man had a few days more,

To live behind a large stone door.

But when the stone was rolled away,

All the world seemed to hear him say,

“My peace I leave you, my peace I give,

I bring life different than the way you live,

Trouble may seem to break you down,

But rejoice for I have risen from the ground.”

And it is for all this I say,

That despite the pain I feel today,

That I believe you are who you say,

And I will wait just three more days.

I've begun studying Isaiah over break. Its one of those books of the bible that we hear in passing all the time, as so many prophecies come from it, but most people have never really read it. Well, I have actually really read it before, but I've never really studied it. So I figured, what the heck, let's do it.

Anyways, my current thoughts on Isaiah, both from prior readings and my current study, are this:
Isaiah is a book that centers around two things: Comfort and Punishment. I feel like Isaiah himself would call it blessings and woes or forgiveness and justice.

It seems that the theme of the book is summed up in Chapter 1: 18-20. (The commentary I bought says just verse 18, but there's far too much woe to be only the good...)

1: 18-20
"Come now, let us settle the matter," says the LORD.
"Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.
If you are willing and obedient,
you will eat the good things of the land;
but if you resist and rebel,
you will be devoured by the sword."
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Just like all the other prophets, Isaiah says "obey the Lord's commands, like he told you too. Its best for you, really!" And follows it with, "and if you don't follow God's commands, you're going to get what you want, which isn't God and results in a lot of things you really don't want."

It's funny though, that all of this is manifested through Jesus, a constant figure in Isaiah (though shrouded in some mystery here...). He is the comforter, the forgiver, and the savior that the book continually addresses.

Yet he is also fully the lord who promises to take all of Judah and Jerusalem's food, water, leaders, and skills (chp 3:1-2) and the one who "lifts a banner for the distant nations" to come (to Israel/Judah) and "like young lions growl and seize their prey and carry it off with no one to rescue."

Dang.

But the passage I like most so far is this:

4:2-6
In that day the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in Israel. Those whoa are left in Zion, who remain in Jerusalem, will be called holy, all who are recorded among the living in Jerusalem.
The Lord will wash away the filth of the Women of Zion; he will cleanse the bloodstains from Jerusalem by a spirit of judgement and a spirt of fire.
Then  the Lord will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over all the glory will be a canopy.
It will be a shelter and shade form the head of the day, and a refuge and hiding place form the storm and rain."

After Israel goes through a whole bunch of rotten stuff, the dedicated few left in the kingdom will be cleansed and purified. And the glory of God will surround them, and there will be a canopy of protection around this select remnant. Pretty cool.

Its just a picture of the future kingdom that I haven't seen in a long time. A very physical one.

The question then becomes can this promise of a physical kingdom be generalized to the ingrafted branches of Israel? (Romans 11:11-24) (which includes this guy...)

I'm going to go with yes.

A final thought: It often seems that scripture and the christian life is so simple in principle, but so difficult in action.

Basically, I feel like the only thing I have been taught (by scripture, sermons, life, etc,) recently is obey God's commands and be blessed, abandon them and get what you want (which actually sucks.).

That doesn't make it easy.

Since its christmas time, I feel a christmas post is warranted:


First here is some Christmas songs that shouldn't be:


1. Santa Baby- 
I don't think whoring yourself out to santa is the best way to get what you want (a yacht, a ring, and a baby blue convertible...) Even if the lyrics never intentionally say "momma wants to get with Santy", it seems pretty dang implied.


2. Christmas Shoes: 
If you don't remember this, watch it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpkI7GW2V34
Never has there ever been a more depressing christmas song. I won't start on the musical side of it.


3. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus:
Here is thing, for those kids who believe in Santa Claus, to see Mommy kissing him would be, um, how do I say this, crushing? Not only is your mother having what seems to be a one night fling, if not an affair, its with some guy in a red jump suit. So who's your daddy now?
Yet, its played off like it is a jolly good thing to see Momma and Santa making out under the mistletoe. The lyrics say, 

"Oh, what a laugh it would have been, 

If Daddy had only seen

Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night!"

Daddy would have laughed that Mommy was being unfaithful with a large, perpetually old, mythical man!

Sure its implied that Santa Claus really is daddy because Santa isn't exactly real. But still, I'm going to call not cool. If our culture is going to lie to everyone under the age of 10, they should at least do it so that kids don't have to be crushed by divorce AND lies.

4. Last Christmas:
Originally written by George Michael for Wham! so you know its good.


5. What Can You Get a Wookie for Christmas:
Does Christmas even exist in Star Wars world? Wasn't it a long long time ago, in galaxy far far away, ya know, before Jesus?



6. Anything by Alvin and the Chipmunks, for obvious reasons.


One Christmas song that is so intentionally horrible it should continue being:



Yes please.


Now, for a short rant on a commercial series:
It's Game on Santa is the worst, worst possible way to sell your products.



Apparently people who give you nice stuff for free are hateable purely based on their physique. Or maybe Mommy is jealous after Santa went back home to Mrs. Claus after their brief one night make out session last christmas. She gave him her heart, yet he gave it away. Yet instead of giving it to someone else this Christmas as Good Ole George Michael would, she's taking it to him with a best buy beat down.


Oh and she hates her dog.


Like I said, bad commercial.

Some thoughts:

-When you have sinus surgery, you think everything is out to get you in the face. Doors are trying to open into your nose, every frisbee and football is coming straight at your face, and everybody has a secret urge to punch you that they are using all of their will power to resist. Someones going to crack soon.
When did I get paranoid?

-The number of seconds in the five second rule is directly proportional to how tasty the food your eating is. Brownies get a full minute, even if they are gooey and pick up a ton of dirt. 3 day old little caesar's pizza gets around 3 seconds. I expect fruitcake gets negative time.

-The internet can be wonderful. There is a lot of trash out there, but good ole prospectors can sometimes fine the gold. These can entertain you for hours:

• http://cheesepeople.tumblr.com/ and http://breadpeople.tumblr.com/ - Famous people with Cheese/Bread for heads. And Puns.
• http://kimjongillookingattthings.tumblr.com/ - North Korea FTW.
• http://moustair.tumblr.com/- What if the hair on your head was actually your mustache?
• http://therapboard.com/- Catch phrases
• http://textsfrombennett.tumblr.com/ - Obscene, but hilarious.
• http://selleckwaterfallsandwich.tumblr.com/- Tom Selleck, A Waterfall, and sandwich. Always.
• 56 Worst Analogies/Similes-  Came across this for like the third time ever this week. Still as good as it was back in high school.

- I really need to get cracking on finding a summer internship. And my homework.

-On a more serious note, I am seriously considering unbecoming a football fan. I love Clemson, and I love watching football, and I love when the tigers play well and win. I mean I can even enjoy it when they lose. But people care WAY to much. There's too much hate. And I'm not just saying between Clemson and Carolina fans. 

I sat in great seats for the Wake Forest game this season with my mom. Clemson wasn't looking their best, though they did scrape a W. Anyways, at one point in the third quarter the people beside me, who had been yelling negative things at the coaches ALL GAME LONG, got in an argument with a woman four rows in front of me. They seriously screamed at each other for 2 or 3 minutes. In order to break up the fight, a guy in between them got up and yelled at both of them. 

They were all Clemson fans. They all hated each other. 

After they finished screaming the girl I was sitting beside was murmuring to herself about how "these our seats and if they don't like how we yell then they should leave."

It was the worst football experience I have ever had. If I hadn't had a commitment right after the game (surprise birthday tailgate, what-up!) I would have gone home.

If you think that's an isolated experience, go scroll down your Facebook newsfeed. Everybody's hating on everybody about Clem/Carolina and its been a dang week.

Its an inflated piece of leather. It doesn't matter.

Nobody remembers who won the Clemson Carolina game in 1999.

Clemson won, and went 6-6. Carolina went defeated that season. I just looked it up, and I still don't care.

We will see how many games I go to next season, I feel like hiking, biking, fishing, kayaking, climbing, and resting might all be better alternatives. Football just doesn't seem worth it.

-Expect another blog post in a day or two.

Song of the day:
Your New Twin Sized Bed- Death Cab for Cutie

Foods that sound gross and are delicious:
Cheesecake
Cream cheese (and cream cheese icing)
Sour cream
Refried beans
Hot Dogs
Zucchini/Pumpkin Bread

Foods that sound gross and are (or at least probably are):
Pickled pigs feet
Spam
Baby food
Blood sausage
Carrot cake (y'all can fight me on this one, but i'm right.)

Foods that sound good but are gross:
Fruit cake

Why do they sell that?:
Chicken necks

Foods that sound gross and probably are delicious but I refuse to try:
Pork Rinds (Deep fried pork skin?...)



Unrelated to todays' ponderings on food:

I really have been sitting in Philippians 2:12-13. It reads,

"Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed- not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence- continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose."

Isn't it strange? Like this whole salvation, following Jesus thing? We are called to work out our salvation, with fear and trembling. We are supposed to try.  But at the same time that we are called to work it out, we are told that it is God who works. Some cognitive dissonance there, huh?

Its almost like we are supposed to try, but we should expect to not be able to do it on our own. Or maybe trying is learning to try in a way outside of our natural human design, one of humility and asking for help. Can you tell I still don't get it?

Don't be an Antinomian. Grace doesn't entitle you to a right to sin. (Though Jesus will take his glory there anyway.) (Romans 6:15ish)
Don't believe that works save you either. (pick your favorite reference)
But remember faith without works is dead. (James 2:26ish)

Jesus is redemptive, but he asks you to follow him.

Peace and Joy. And humility,
boyer.

Song of the day:
We will run- Gungor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjNtlUqaCZo