Life.

STOP.
Put down what your doing for a second. Hang up the phone, take off your jacket, set down your keys and just think...for a second.

Now look at your hands.

Wiggle each finger.

Think about all of the different things that you can do with them:

-Piano
-Painting
-Football
-Lifting furniture
-Steering a car
-Brushing your teeth
-Baking a cake
-Greeting a friend...

Now think about the complexity of your hands. As you wiggle your fingers, watch all of the tendons and bones and muscles all interacting and responding to your will.

Now think about the connection between your limbs and your mind.

How DO you make that finger wiggle? Right now I am typing rapidly on a keyboard with 26 letters, 10 numbers, and a variety of other characters. My fingers fly as if they have a mind of their own...but they don't! There is a magical cycle going on right now in front of my computer screen:

My mind is coming up with abstract ideas, that are then turned into logical words and phrases, which are then sent to my fingers letter by letter, and eventually are sent to my computer screen. To make the cycle complete...it is this very act of typing that is feeding my mind in the first place!

What about our mind? THink about the many things that you can do with it:

-Figure out large Mathmatical equations
-Compose songs and ditties
-Recall events and conversations that happened many years before
-Memorize large portions of text or movie lines
-Dream
-Create imaginary situations that have never taken place with people that never existed...

Now we culd spend the rest of our lives being amazed at our wonderful bodies, (our eyes, our nose, our ears, our hair) but there is even more to life than this!

Think of your sorroundings. Why is their so much variety? Why is their such a thing as texture? Why is their such a thing as color?

Think about color for a minute. What if everything was black and white? What if there was no such thing as green? What if all of the trees and grass and frogs were all purple? Or Blue? Or white? What if the sky was always yellow? Or pink? Or brown?

Why are sunsets so spectacular?

Why is there such a thing as music?

Why is their such a thing as beauty?

Why are there so many kinds of animals?

Why there so many kinds of trees?

Why darkness?

Why light?

Why daytime?

Why night?

And what of the seasons? And what of the snow? And what of the desert and the beach and the mountains and the prairie? WHY???!!!!


ANSWER: Because God made it this way.

So thank the lord that you have 10 fingers instead of 3! Thank the Lord that the sky is blue! Thank the Lord that cheeseburgers taste the way they do! Thank the Lord for the rainbow, and the ocean, and the rain, and the sun and the moon and the stars and the horses! Thank the Lord for your sight, and your hearing and your smell and your mind! Thank the Lord for your friends and your family and your LIFE!!!!

And then thank him for living the life you could never live...and for dying the death that you would never have to die.

THANK THE LORD!!!!!



Now get back to work!

Death

My uncle Woody died on Saturday.

As a Christian death brings up some of the hardest truths of my faith...eternal truths. Truths about Heaven and Hell...about justification and sanctification. It is easy to get depressed during times like this...very easy...

I didn't know Woody very well, he lived in Minnesota I lived in Hawaii. I've probably seen him less than ten times in my entire life. Woody was single, overweight and a heavy smoker...this habit is what eventually did him in.

I prayed for Woody a lot as I was growing up, since I didn't know if he was saved or not. Thankfully, his sister Candy and her husband Vic lived close to him and brought him to Church from time to time. When we went up to visit them for the first time back in the spring, uncle Vic said that Woody had acknowledged the doctrines of man's depravity and God's grace while in the waiting room of the hospital. He never did give up smoking...but then again, there's no verses against that either...

Vic said that Woody was in God's hands now... which was the same thing that his dad had said on his deathbed a few months before. Grandpa lived almost a completely Godless life, absorbed with sports, coffeed mugs, T-Shirts, Baseball hats and a whole assortment of other needless trivialities...but I'm sure he would have told you that he was a good person if you asked him. However, the truth is, he lived out his life denying the very purpose for which he was created...to worship God and to find his satisfaction in Him. That is, perhaps, until the last few days of his life. Yes, Grandpa and Woody are now (as always) in God's hands.

And that's just the thing. We are always just one heart beat away from eternity. We are always dependant on God's blessings to make it through the day. We constantly lie to ourselves and deny this dependance, but in the end we have to acknowledge it. As we lay there on that white hospital bed, full of tubes and wires, this great truth becomes so clear: We are in God's hands.

Although this truth becomes frightfully clear at the end, it is just as true now as it is then. As you go to school, brush your teeth, talk to a friend, drive your car...God's providence is undeniable. Why don't we live as if we acknowledge this fact? Is it because we do not realize it? This is the real mystery...

As I look at the pictures on my wall and the memories in my head, it is easy to despair over how temporal everything is. One day, I realize, it will be me in that coffin. One day it will be my brother or my sister...my mother or my father...my friend...we all will be in that same spot some day. How can we live joyfully in light of this truth? How can we rejoice everyday in the creation before us?

Because death isn't the end.

Don't we realize that death was conquered by our savior 2000 years ago? Don't we realize that to live is Christ and to die is gain? Don't we know that to be absent in the body is to be present with the Lord? Do we feel the hope and the excitement as Jesus says to the robber on the cross that "today you will be with me in paradise"? We should not be amazed that these bodies will die...we should be amazed that we exist at all! This is the mystery...that Christ loved us so much that he made us...and that he gave us the right to be his children. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him, will NOT perish but have eternal life! Can we find comfort there? Can we find joy and motivation for these tired souls in this eternal truth?

No...death is not the end...it is only the beginning...

Thankfulness

Thankfulness is a weapon.

When you realize that you have been given so much that you don't deserve and can never repay, it just keeps things in perspective.

When I look around this apartment it is very easy to be thankful. Practically everything that I "own" has been lovingly donated to me by someone else:

-The couch
-the loveseat
-the pots and pans
-the silverware
-the clothes
-the shower curtain
-the towels...the list goes on and on.

So, whenever you feel like complaining about the next bill, or some other expense that you are obligated to pay, just look around you and think of all of the incredible gifts that others have given you and imagine where you would be if it weren't for the generosity of others.

It's also nifty to be thankful when you start to become prideful with all you have acheived and acquired. Chances are you would not nearly be as successful if others had not pitched in a helping hand from time to time.

And I'm not just talking about material posessions either. After all, the biggest gifts in life are found in relationships. Where would you be today if it were not for that parent, or that pastor, or that teacher, or that friend that met with you at starbuck's every tuesday to just share your burdens? I know that I would not be very far...

-My mom spent 15 years teaching me at home...when she didn't have to...

-Pastor Pete took me to Quizno's just because he wanted to know how I was doing...

-Jonathan bought me a cappucino because he treasures my friendship more than 4 dollars...

And the truth is, these things cannot even come close to comparing with the incredible gift that God gave to us 2000 years ago...the gift that blows all these other gifts out of the water...

The gift of being his children...
with all the glorious benefits of his kingdom.

And yes, you're right; we can never pay him back. But then again, He never really expected us to either. He simply wanted us to be thankful...and to live out that thankfulness. And with God's help, and the encouragement of others, we can.