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Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.


MAIN THEMES

On identity
i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes.

On Christianity
I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you.

On dreams
Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.


OTHER THEMES

On melancholy
It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself.

On memory and nostalgia
It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting.

On language
I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word.

On politics
Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for?

On society
People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last.

On growing old
Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall.

On philosophy
I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

On a daily basis
One line quips, like this.


CHAT





Wednesday, September 15, 2004
BEING HUMAN

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?

*


How did i get here?

i had one of those moments in the police station, waiting for the seargent to review my case. retracing my steps only told me what i knew. but it didn't satisfy that deep and hollow need to know that someone felt exactly like i was feeling. no one else in that police station would ever know what it felt like sitting there quietly, considering my car, my finances, my commitments... i was worried. i was sad. i looked calm but i was very brokenhearted inside.

i was reading Hebrews and it started speaking to me, in my moment, my hour of need. a lonely no one stranded in a lonely nowhere.

Hebrews 2:14-18
"Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity...he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest..."

recently, i've been thinking about Jesus the carpenter, Jesus the son of Mary and Joseph, Jesus who most likely was the buddy of a bunch of blokes in his 20s. and then i think of this, "he too shared in their humanity". here was a God who called himself Son of Man - Jesus' favourite nickname for himself clues us into his humanity, not his divinity.

i feel lazy sometimes, and though i must go on i'm tempted to rest. i feel lonely sometimes, and though i should stay still, i'm tempted to make contact. i feel angry and i am tempted to glare, desperate and i am tempted to surrender, rejected and i am tempted to withdraw. i am human, i say. i am not God!

but God made himself human, through the person of Jesus of Nazareth, he allowed the world to dangle all kinds of carrots before him - money, power, sex, food... in the process, he made himself subject to loneliness, brokenheartedness, anguish, pain and passion, yet he survived it all. he ended it all! even if i weren't christian, he'd be my hero! but more than that - he is My God!

Hebrews 4:15
"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet was without sin."

he is my God because he knows what it was like, he was there before. he's my "been there done that" older brother, where all the sinful things he hadn't personally "done", he bore for those who did. so that he knows what every human feels - what every sinful human feels - Jesus became on the cross a sex deviant, wife beater, a petty swindler, a pick-pocket thief, a 9-year old who says "f*** you". where did he draw the line? HE DIDN'T DRAW THE LINE! he took everything. and part of that everything includes my sadness, my worry, my fears, my desires, my loneliness, my desolation, and YOUR desolation.

how many of you ever felt that you've been left in the lurch, abandoned by God?

Lama sabachthani! "My Lord, my Lord, why have you forsaken me?" that's what he said while bleeding to death hanging on the cross. do you not know that like you, Jesus also felt forsaken? do you not know that before you felt abandoned, he felt abandoned? do you also not know that today he has so much power thanks to what he went through - and as your lord he can give you that same power to go through human life like him?

if you're wondering if anyone understands what you're going through then your search will end here. if you've always been unsure if God appreciates how hard it is to be human then your search will end here. he doesn't just watch you from heaven so far away, he is so close to you right now, he might as well be staring in your face. and he doesn't just listen to you untouched, he is scarred every time you are scarred. his scars bear evidence that he went through all the things you're going through, and rose again. i haven't talked about him rising again but you know, the fact that he did means that this human wasteland can be and has been defeated.

if you've never accepted Jesus as your lord and saviour, then you haven't felt the comfort of knowing a God who knows what it's like to have human problems. if you want to accept this God, this scarred Jesus, then pray with me this prayer: Lord Jesus, i accept you as my lord and saviour. i accept that you died on the cross knowing all my sins, bearing all my sins, and after you died, you rose again to life. today, i can call you my God. i am no longer broken, because you will make me whole. Let it be.

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Genusfrog [ 11:08 am ]

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