In Case of Snake Bite, Pull Cord

There is nothing more scary than receiving two voicemail messages, one from a cousin saying "Josh, call me" in a serious voice, and one from my brother saying "Josh, call me; something happened to dad." I immediatley called Justin to learn that my dad had been bit in the hand by a rattlesnake at our ranch in Freer.

Freefall...

Go home...

Drive to Chorpus Christi...

Pull Cord.

I never realized how big of a support network my father and family has. My mother found out about the incident while having dinner at her pastors house. I had been at a crawfish boil with Anna, who is a co-worker of Ellie's, whose parents were also having dinner at their pastors house. As soon as I got off the phone with my brother I told Anna what had happened and that we needed to go. Ellie and Jeremiah were across the table, so I informed them as well. She called her dad, he was sitting across the table from my mom and told her (of course, her cell phone was at the house, where it belongs).

We all converged at my parents house, then loaded up in the car, with my uncle behind the wheel. The cell phones had already been working behind the scenes, but the first hour on the road we all scrolled through our phonebooks calling everyone we knew. Everyone we knew called everyone they knew. I would not be the least surprised to find out that we had well over a thousand people praying for him and us.

Community is a strange, beautiful thing. I am now starting to see with new eyes why it is so critical for living out a healthy Christianity. We need each other. Sure, we can do a lot on our own, but when we do, it takes away from us, makes us less. With community we can deal with situations in a way that builds, that adds to our lives, making us stronger, not wearing us down.

We still don't know what pasture we will land in; thankfully, with the prayers that have been prayed for us and the grace of a wonderous God, we are hovering over the greener one. One thing that I know, though, is that even if we find ourselves in the other one, we will have a soft landing; not without scrapes and bruises, but soft.

Thank you all for your prayers.

Josh

Good, Not so Good and Bad

I have been thinking of sin lately, mainly because I am steeped in it, but, hey, thats me. Specifically, I have been thinking of the areas in which I am most tempted, and which many are similarly are tempted.

I have always loved the concept of God expressing his being to us through the good, the true, and the beautiful. I delight in art which makes me reflect on the beauty of creation; poetry with fills we with awe at the thought of Gods depth. And, unfortunately, this if usually where my temptations begin.

I believe that the most powerful and potentially destructive sins begin in the true, good, and beautiful. Sin begins as a slight perversion of these. Then, the more removed they become from God and remain as separate concepts the more they begin to fester with corruption.

One example of this can be seen in art. To preface: this is a gross generalization about art, so don't be too pissed at me. I have always appreciated the visual arts, I am very visual by nature and so they have always been able to communicate rather strongly to me. At the beginning, I loved art because it spoke of God's creation, and the inherent beauty therein. But it seems the trend has moved away from expression of the universal, to the expression of the individual. Within this trend, art has become more "dark" (something which I am not entirely opposed to: I hate kitsch). But it has become dark in a way that is not informing, but merely destructive.

On a more personal note, I have always been a lover of photography. And through this love, I came to an appreciation of the female form, for it has long been a popular subject of photography. The body in general is an amazing thing. It's form; such graceful lines and intricate connections. It is a true thing of beauty. However, this healthy appreciation led to pornography. While female form is something that should be appreciated, it can only be truly appreciated in the correct context. For me pornography gets its appeal from its depiction of this beauty, but it becomes destructive because it has perverted the beautiful into a consumable, something that is used for our own ends instead of initiating worship of God.

Spirit & Soul

The other night Aaron spoke on the nature of worship. During the course of sermon he read a passage (? address) from the message that said something along the lines of worship is our spirit/soul interacting with God in honesty. This sparked memories of past thoughts for me. I have often wondered what exactly our spirit is. This honesty of soul may be a good starting point for understanding this concept.

Something that has always struck me in the old testament is the use of names. Names were not just symbolic placeholders for individual identification, but spoke to who the person was, it was more than a name, as we understand the word. I wonder if this could inform the biblical beginnings of our new testament concept of the personal/individual spirit.

For a long time, I always viewed spirit, my spirit, as something "other" than myself. Now I wonder if there may be more to it. I wonder if my spirit is really myself at my core. If it is the culminations of my longings, my thoughts, and my habits. Day to day, I am separated from this spirit by my deviations of my core self, yet it informs everything I do. Given this view of spirit, it will change and develop over time as I change through my experiences and as my world view forms.

For me, this idea leads to another thought, the idea of Christ's redemption as played out in my own life. As I grow into relationship with God, this, if real, will begin to inform my behaviors and over time, change who I am at my core. On the other hand, if I delve into my own devices, my core will crumble.

Just some random thoughts.