Sunday, June 28, 2009

Crickets

One of the best parts of camping is the night. Stars that went unnoticed are now blinding reflections of the Creator, covering the entire vastness of sky like a Jackson Polluck gone exactly right. There is always this unexplainable stillness that just saturates the air. And there are crickets.
These crickets that deafen indoors-mens’ ears with their noises and serenade outdoors-mens’ ears with their song.
It is impossible to distinguish between their cheeps. One cricket a hundred feet away sounds pretty much the same as the one underneath your tent. It is impossible to even pick out one specific cricket over a group of crickets. They are unified. One continuous and resounding song erupting from all sides.
The chirp of a cricket is just simply a mating call. It is the only thing a cricket knows how to do to get the only thing it desires. The cricket is wanting and in need so it cries out every night desperate for someone to hear him and fill his desperation.
Every night the air is filled with the chirps of those who are wanting.
One curious thing about these crickets is that it is so easy to block them out of mind no matter how loud they get. I was sitting last night talking about absolutely nothing with some guys before we headed to our tent exhausted to go to sleep when I heard them. I had heard them so many times before but this time I really heard them. I was in one of those moments that apparently happen quite frequently where I zone out the world around me and get all philosophical in my head. I started thinking about the mating calls of these insects.
The sun had been down for a couple hours already so the crickets had been at it for awhile and I didn’t hear them. I am so used to hearing this racket that I blocked it out completely. How many other cries for help have I blocked out because I was used to them?
Everyone around me is doing all they can to get my attention and they are all chirping individually so loud and unified that they have become this easily ignored annoyance. When I finally stopped to hear them I realized they were really, really loud –so loud that we were raising our voices just to be heard over them. We are doing everything we can to ignore them.
They were the first thing I heard on my first camping trip, and they kept me awake all night. I was 8 and I couldn’t fathom how loud they could be. When I went on my first trip with the Holy Spirit I was amazed at how loud the world was screaming and the thought of these hurting people kept me awake all night. I really need to hear those crickets again.
I was laying in my sleeping bag last night with the sound of these crickets resonating in my ears. I have to hear them. I thank God I get to.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Destination

My whole life I have had goals. For a good part of my childhood I wanted to be a professional basketball player. This goal was abandoned when I found out how white I really was. In fourth grade, my goal was to set the school record the most veggie fries (think of every vegetable you know of, puree them together and then stick them in a deep fryer and you have a veggie fry) eaten in one lunch period without throwing up. As to the best of my knowledge, no student of Smith-Barnes elementary school has been able to brave beating my record of 47. I am sure, though, that I am the only who even cares about this record.
When I was 9 years old I was baptized in the Holy Spirit for the first time and received my "call to the ministry." My goals hence have changed dramatically.
It was shortly after this experience that I read David Wilkerson’s The Cross and the Switchblade which completely altered my view of my purpose. I wanted what David Wilkerson had, not so that I was so envious I wished to mimic his every move in ministry, but I wanted God to reach hurting people through me like He was doing through him Hurting teenagers specifically. If you haven’t read this book stop what you are doing and go find it, the movie doesn’t do it justice, and then read the sequel called 12 Angels from Hell.
Since then, a day has not gone by that I forget what God is calling me to.
Youth.
The hurting.
The world.
I have spent every day dreaming of what God will do in me. The sermons that will be preached to audiences of thousands, then nationally syndicated then quoted and misquoted in the years to come. I dream of the testimonies of lives changed, people having real authentic and thriving relationships with their Creator.
The bigger your dreams are for tomorrow, the more boring today becomes.
I have been really frustrated lately at how slowly all the things I have been promised are coming into fruition. And then the revelation came. Again.
I was running this morning like I do every morning. I have learned that when you are on mile 4 and only halfway through you will try to think of anything other than your cramping stomach and the sweat that constantly gets into your eyes.
It was here that I heard that infamous inaudible voice.
"Am I your destination, or just your method of obtaining it?"
Ouch! Not only were my legs hurting but now also was my conscience. I had learned a long time ago that I can’t do anything on my own, I fail miserably. I knew that God had to be more than completely involved if I were to be who I was created to be. This is basic stuff.
But it all revolved around me. Me getting what I was promised. Me being the best I could be. Me reaching that potential instilled in me by God.
I am realizing that my quest to be "all God wanted me to be" was the only way I measured my worth. If I didn’t fulfill my dreams, am I a failure?
Come on Kyle, those childish insecurities have been gone for years. Nope.
I see this in everything I do. I want to run the fastest, know the most, quote the most, live the best. What I thought was fulfilling the verse in Ecclesiastes that says "whatever your hands find to do, so it with all you might,"* was really just me trying to feel good about myself. The veggie fries were consumed at such disgusting quantity to get attention. The ministry goals were set because the only thing I thought I was able to do was ministry.
I still believe the promises will absolutely come to pass, and everything in me longs for that day but they should not be my goals. My goals should be to simply pursue. Run. Chase. Be fulfilled.
I want to spend everyday growing closer to God and learning all of His minute intricacies instead of wishing I were in a pulpit. This should keep me busy for an eternity or so.
I haven’t completely figured it out but I’m working on it. God does want my best, He wants everything I have to give because it’s all His anyway. My best should be given because it is His best, not mine. I am valuable to Him no matter what I accomplish. This is going to take awhile for it to really stick with me.

*Ecclesiastes 9:10

Monday, June 1, 2009

Motion

So I’ve had a rough week. Maybe a rough couple of weeks. I’m going through something that people everywhere go through, that is rejection and confusion. So I wondered where these people find their hope. Psalms. That’s a good idea. I’ll read Psalms.
Being the sensible person that I am I started with the first chapter, with every intention of skipping around its’ 150 chapters until I found a temporarily satisfying one-liner which would remind me of a song which might lift my spirits for the moment. I had high expectations this morning. What I found, in the very first chapter no less, was this:
Blessed is the man
Who does not walk in the council of the wicked
Or stand in the way of sinners
Or sit in the seat of mockers
But his delight is in the law of the Lord
And on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water
Which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not whither
Whatever he does prospers
What has stood out in these verses to me is the concept of a tree planted by streams of water. The image is stuck in my head. I did not at first get the intention of this image and I misunderstood how this tree would be compared to a blessed man.
A tree is a plant and plants come from seeds. A seed recently fallen onto soft ground has the company of other seeds that are going through the same experience and has the safety of the nearby mother tree.
Then the rain comes and the streams form and carry this seed off from safety and into a world of confusion and unrest. The seed is beaten down and washed away until if it is lucky it finds a soft in the sand where it can bury itself.
The problems don’t end there.
If it is fortunate to plant itself, it will spend the rest of it’s’ life struggling to grow while everything rushes around it. Alone and caught in every piece of debris that floats by. Alone.
And the psalmist compares this sad little tree to a man blessed?
Then the revelation occurred. The light bulb which occupies my brain suddenly was now illuminating my senses.
What I realized is that nothing in this entire universe is standing still. The wind is blowing; the sea is turning and the tectonic plates are shifting. The planet is rotating while it spins itself around a sun that, along with everything else in the universe, is propelling further away from each other and while this is all happening I am getting older. Time just keeps going and going and going. I realized that God is the very motion at the center of it all.
He is the stream, constantly moving forward, around, into, out of, underneath and above all of me and all of everything. The problem then, lies in me.
I see that real reality is motion and I do everything I can to keep up. A tree does not move like a stream.
If God had intended on me keeping up He would have made me a stream. He made me a seed. When I find it is impossible for me to keep up- to reach that impossible standard, to be at all times in tune and willing to follow- I give up. When I say I give up, I really mean that I devote myself to a greater, far more challenging task; that is to make everything else stop. I want today to be just like yesterday when I was comfortable with the other seeds under the shade of the mother tree. I want to be able to control my surroundings and their effect on me. I want some predictability.
Nothing in the universe is standing still, who am I to tell it otherwise?
I can’t keep up so I give up and try to force my surroundings into something I can control. Something consistent, something safe, something stagnant. Of course I fail miserably.
But wait! If God didn’t create me to keep up with Him, He therefore can’t expect me to. His command to me is simply to be still. He says "Be still and know that I am God"*. The beauty lies in the motion and I miss that motion when I kill myself with unreal expectations to move as swiftly as He or to keep everything from moving at all. Be still.
Stop trying to understand where I am going and just stand in awe of the fact that I am going. Let My wind rustle through your leaves and My water over your roots. Look around and be amazed at My motion. Be still and know that I am God.
It makes perfect sense. God created us with full knowledge that we could never be who He is so He uprooted us and planted us right where we could be, in the middle of His glorious motion. He planted us in the exact spot where His motion could benefit us the most. We are perpetually nourished because He has channeled all of His motion into our very roots. It’s only when we sit still that suddenly we start moving, but by no means of our own, upward and outward and every way a healthy tree can grow, reaching our highest potential that was instilled in us by our Creator. Our fruit yields in season and our leaves don’t whither. Whatever we do prospers.
We get to be apart of this motion simply by being planted beside it. The beauty is in the motion. Everything around me may look different tomorrow. Everything in me may feel different tomorrow. I might not like it. I may feel like God has moved me to the wilderness. I might be right. I may feel like God has stopped moving all together but it will be ok. God will move somewhere else the next day and I will be with Him because the beauty is in the motion. My emotions may take a downward spiral to depths unseen, or they may traverse the grey line between despair and contentment but it will be ok. The beauty is in the motion, because the motion is from God and I get to be apart of it.
This still life is no doubt a painful one. It is far easier to get hit by debris when you are standing still, but the chaos of His glory makes it worthwhile to suffer the beating of anything which may float your way. Most assuredly it will be uncomfortable, and you will be scarred by the things you are hit with but you will know that God is at work.
This stream doesn’t end in a ditch. It ends in life, real abundant mouth watering life that can never be quenched by stagnancy. Please note there is a difference between stillness and stagnancy. Stagnancy is refusing to be moved, and stillness is subjecting yourself to a flow other than you own, thus allowing God to move through you.
Stillness also is not spectatorship. Spectators merely watch but we get to be apart of it all. We get to be apart of this motion by moving our roots in the direction the stream is flowing so that this stream flows and picks up more wandering seeds and plants them as it did to us.
Stillness is flexible. It has to be as there will be times when God uproots your fully grown trunk and replants you further down stream in a place where His motion is faster, more powerful and covers all places so that your can receive all the nourishment you have grown to need. It also has to be content knowing that absolutely nothing in it’s power can be done to further along the stream or hinder it from moving a certain way.
The stream is wild and untamable, reckless and powerful. The best thing to be is to be beside it. Still. Watching in awe.
I will finish with an excerpt from T.S. Eliot’s "Ash Wednesday."
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto thee



*Psalm 46:10