Peek-A-Boo part 2

                I have never really written a sequel to a post but God just kept giving me stuff that I think should have been in the last one so I am writing it all down. I thought about calling this “Peek-a-boo Strikes Back” or “Peek-a-boo Returns” but I thought they were a little over the top and cheesy even by my standards.

                In this game of hide-and-go-seek called life, God sometimes is the “hider.” When He takes this job He is like a fat kid who hides behind a flagpole who hides just because it is part of the game but just desperately wants to be found by you. Sometimes He is the “seeker” and plays the adult who knows full well where his kids are hiding but holds off on finding them until the kids are tired of hiding. More often than not, though, He plays “home base;” that place where no one can touch you and you are free from anyone out to get you. I just found out that He can also be your hiding place.

Lately I have had this desire to be hidden in God. It is more than just me finding Him or Him finding me, but is about me being found in Him. I want to experience such intimacy with Him that I lose myself in the process.

 I used to think that I could measure my relationship with God by looking at how much I was producing, i.e. how many people I was sharing my faith with, how many blogs I could spit out in a month, or how much I was being directly used for His purposes. God has been teaching me that instead of producing, I need to measure my relationship with Him by how much I am reducing. My dreams, needs, desires, and very identity should be getting smaller the closer I get to God because that is the only way He can replace all those things with His dreams, His needs, His desires, and His identity. I shouldn’t matter as much as I think I do.

I struggle a lot with pride. I think way too highly of myself than I should.

The beauty of being surrounded by God is that nobody can see me. Instead of God being that thing inside me one has to really look for to see, He should be that thing surrounding me like a cloud that you can’t help but see. I can’t stand in the way when I am out of the picture.

I want to live such a life that after I meet people that they can’t even remember my name but are somehow compelled to go deeper into God.

Peek-A-Boo, where are you?

Peek-a-boo!

    I haven't yet found it in Scripture but I am sure there is a verse that talks about how much God loves "Where's Waldo" books. They seem like something He would really get a kick out of.

    He just seems to really be into the seeking and finding and being sought and being found kind of thing. The whole plan of humanity is that we find Him and that He finds us.

    Proverbs 25:2 says that "It is the glory of the Lord to conceal a matter (NIV)."

    Now there are some verses that I read and I'm like "Wow! This is incredible! I'm going to go Tweet this and post it on Facebook and maybe even write a cute blog about how awesome this verse is."

    This is not one of those verses. Instead of highlighting this one I just want to scratch it out. You might be a stronger Christian than me and would never even think about scratching out one of the very words of God but I guess I am not that spiritual. I don't like this verse for the same reason that I hate "Where's Waldo" books.

    I don't want anything hidden from me. I don't want to have to search for my answers. I want to know it all, right now.

    I seem to be missing the point of everything. The rest of the verse says "to search out a matter is the glory of kings."

    Hmm. So God gets glory by playing the "hider" in this game of hide-and-go-seek and I get glory by being the "seeker."

    In 1^st Corinthians chapter 2 verse 6 Paul says something awesome, which is very characteristic of him.

    "We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began."

    Now I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty epic. "The Secret Wisdom of God" would know about how to create a universe, how to tame a leviathan, and tell storms to be quiet- which is pretty much the definition of the word "epic." I feel like this verse should end with something like "One ring to rule them all."

There are some times, though, when I could care less about the mysteries of God. Sometimes I would be OK just knowing that He is still around.

    We all face those times when God is nowhere to be found. All of the sudden you start picturing Jesus in a red and white striped sweater with a matching hat because he has become just another Waldo to find in the midst of chaos. He is just another thing in this world that requires your full attention to try and find surrounded by things meant to confuse you. You search and search until your eyes start bleeding and you have pulled out all your hair out of frustration. You have come across a lot of things that looked like the God you were searching for but none of them were the real thing, only dressed like it. You give up, because you think a God who would abandon you when you needed Him most doesn't deserve to be sought after any longer.

    All of the sudden you look down only to discover that you are wearing the ugly red and white striped sweater. You are wearing the ugly matching hat. You are Waldo (or Wendy).

    This whole time you have been looking for God you have missed the fact that he is desperately searching for you. The difference between Him and you is that He never gives up until Waldo is found.

    So we have a dilemma. If God and I are both looking for each other, then why is it so hard to actually connect? The reason is that God is only found by those who want to be found themselves. Until we decide to give God permission to search us out we will not get one opportunity to search Him out.

    It all makes sense that way. Human beings are designed to seek, not just to be found. If we were just handed everything we ever wanted we wouldn't have anything to make our lives worth it. We seek everything and spend our whole lives doing it. Usually, the things we seek could be completely explored and searched out in a couple years. The pursuit of God could go for eternity without ever reaching the end, that point where we have totally figured God out.

    The beautiful thing is that we really have all of eternity.

    C.S. Lewis described Heaven in his parable like book, The Great Divorce as a great mountain range where people spent eternity journeying deeper and deeper into the mountains. With each step, they grew closer and closer to the full glory of God, but it takes them all of eternity to get there. I really like this idea because I used to picture Heaven as spending the first couple millennia getting answers from God about all the things that I had questions about (if Adam and Eve had bellybuttons, why the chicken crossed the road etc) and then after now knowing everything there is to know I would just spend the rest of the time playing UNO with Martin Luther.

    I am overjoyed that I serve a God so big it will take me forever to know.

    If you think about it, pursuing God is the only thing that we will be doing forever, we might as well start now. If we seek, we shall find.

The Great Bacterial Romance

    First of all, that is probably the most disgusting title I have ever thought of. It will make sense though so stay with me.

    Think about a germ. It might be hard because you don't see them every day on account of them being so microscopically small. I mean they are really, really small. They are so minuscule that thousands of them pass by you without you even noticing. Germs are never in a place you want to be.

    Germs have a very short lifespan. Billions of germs die every day and we could care less. In fact, most of the time we are the ones who initiate the germicide. I don't know of anybody who sees this as morally wrong. Kill a person, well that's wrong by every one's standard. Kill a dog and everyone will hate you. Kill a spider and you are congratulated. Kill a germ and nobody cares.

    The level of significance which we attribute to things decreases as they get smaller. It is just fact.

    Now think about you, specifically in relation to the germ. You are an unfathomable size to the mind (if it had one) of that germ, and that isn't a fat joke. Imagine how impossible it would be for something the size of a germ to wrap its head around something as big as you. Just as it is hard for you to understand how small the germ is, it is hard for the germ to understand how big you are.

    Now imagine that you, in all of your unfathomableness (I can make up words, it is the right of the blogger), love this germ with all your power. You are infatuated with the mere idea of this germ, not just any germ but this one insignificant germ specifically. Imagine that you love this germ so much that you decide to degrade yourself to the drastic point of entering into this germ's world of slime and becoming another germ. You have to give up everything you know and can do as a human to become the scum of the Earth with a lifespan of a mere couple of hours. Finally, imagine that you choose to give up your life all together because you love this germ so much that the only way to save it is for you to die.

    Let's say you have a way to communicate with the germ world and you do everything you can to just have a conversation with your germ but it wants nothing to do with you. After all you have done for this germ it repays you by spitting in your face and insulting your mother. Yet your love remains.

    The idea is absolutely ridiculous. Who would choose death by Lysol over all the advantages of being a person?

    This is what continues to blow my mind everyday and I am convinced that the rest of eternity will come and go before I am able to wrap my mind around it.

    I am the germ.    

    I shouldn't matter at all to the God who created the Big Dipper, tidal waves, photosynthesis, and A minor. The mind that thought up volcanoes, magnets, and pelicans should have no room in it for someone with as fleeting of a life as me. A lot of times I don't even notice when He is talking to me, I just go about my day wasting the time He has given me.

    Some people think Christians are the way they are because they think they are better than everybody else. That is not true at all for me. I am a Christian because I recognize myself to be the lowest kind of life form imaginable and am taking the only chance given to me of improving my status.

    It is not that I think myself more holy than the rest of the world, but that I realize just how incredibly insignificant I am in comparison to the God who loves me unconditionally and unexplainably no matter how many times I reject Him and ignore Him. No matter how many times I tell him that what I am doing is more important than what He tells me to do He still comes down from His comfortable position into my greasy, grimy, germ world and loves me.

    I cannot imagine why the God who holds the universe in the folds of His hand wants to wrap His arms around me but he shows me every day that He does.

    It is the Great Bacterial Romance that has been going on since the beginning of time and will continue to the end of it. The romance that has been rejected, ignored, forgotten, misunderstood, falsely accused and abandoned still remains. He has already done all the work of coming into your world and making away for you to become better than the germ you would have always been. All you have to do be fed up with your germiness enough to accept his offer.

    It seems like a good deal to me.

Face Paint, Cheese Heads, and Church Pews

    To raise funds for our missions endeavors, I, as well as the rest of the team work as supervisors of concession stands at the Georgia Dome, home of the Atlanta Falcons.

    I have worked every home game this season and, needless to say, have seen a lot of people come though my stand. I have seen every kind of fan there is and while trying to feed the masses I have noticed something.

    The people who come to football games are the same kinds of people who go to church.

    Don't believe me? Here is a list of the kind of fans I see at the Georgia Dome, see if you can't see some similarities. Which one are you?

The Bromancer- Of course you love football, it's what guys do. Together. Your greatest memories have revolved around football with a bunch of your closest dudes. Yelling at the TV when the referee makes a bad call is all about joining your brothers in a call for justice.

    Secretly though, you really only enjoy football to the extent that you do because you have friends who do. You have a real hard time watching the game by yourself because to you it is all about being with other people, not because you care about the team. If it weren't for the tailgating, the Sunday afternoon parties, or the fellowship you wouldn't be a fan at all. When your star quarter back makes a mistake that costs them the game you don't say anything, because your friends might think you are rooting for the other team. It's all about keeping the bros happy.

The Girlfriend- To be honest you have no idea what is going on. You gave up a long time ago asking questions because you figure you will never understand. You really don't even like football but you would never tell your boyfriend that, ever. So you clap and cheer at all the right moments, that is, whenever everybody else is clapping and cheering, just to make sure that your little pookie thinks you are just as excited as he is. It is not about the game, it is about spending time with that special someone who happens to be at the game.

The Geographically Convenient- You tried to avoid it but everyone in this city roots for the same team and is way too excited in expressing it. You are a fan because everyone around you is and you don't want to be an outcast. It is part of your culture to cheer for this particular team. Aside from it being expected of you, you really could care less about the game at all. Football is what you are expected to do because it is what everyone around you does, but it really isn't that important to you.

The Jerk- You are the easiest to identify. Everyone knows a jerk when they see one. You are the kind of guy that just yells at everything. You see a fan from the opposing team and just start yelling. Stirring up controversy is part of the game and you thrive when you get one-up on a stranger. Drama keeps the whole event exciting.

The Other Guy- You are a lot like the jerk, just a little bit more confused. You may not intend to stir up controversy but you do anyway because you deliberately wear a jersey of a team that is not even playing. Nobody thinks the cheese on your head is cute when nobody in the stadium has ever even been to Green Bay. Nobody is quite sure why you insist on always having opposing viewpoints on everything or why you are even at this stadium since you aren't cheering for anybody. You probably aren't too sure yourself but you know there is something these other fans have that you want.

The Megatron Lover- Your mission is simple: be seen. You have to be "that guy." You are the guy with obscene amounts of face paint and your own homemade costume. You are in a building with 70,000 plus people but you have to be the one who shows up on the Megatron, the godfather of all plasma TV's. You say it is all about the team, but you and I both know you want more people to notice you than they notice the game.

    You have a female counterpart too. There is no way you would wear four inch heels and a mini skirt to go walk a mile around a cement building and climb hundreds of step unless you were seen doing it. The game is all about people knowing you are there and nothing else. Who cares what the team does, you are your own entertainment.

The Die- Hard- Rain, snow, sleet or fumble you are there for your team. You come alone, because you don't need anyone else to enjoy the game. You wait for hours before hand just because you want to. You don't buy into the hype around you, they are all one time ticket holders who don't know any better but you my friend, have season tickets and you use them to their fullest extent. It doesn't matter how many times your team blows it, you still return every single Sunday. Nothing can keep you from the game you love.

The Paternally Affectionate- You are the greatest of all the fans that step into a stadium. You are the little kid whose eyes fill with wonder when you see the size of what you are stepping into. You don't know the ins and outs of the game and you don't speak the language but you do understand one thing: Your daddy loves this game and you love him. It is only natural that you would love what He is so crazy about. You are just excited to be with your daddy doing the things he loves to do. That is enough for you.