I'm actually posting...?!?

After a soul-searching sabbatical, I'm back. You can hold the welcome-back cheers until afterwards and can begin the incessant brooding of my thoughts and anecdotal quips...ha, ok, enough Ben.

There are two ideas that have not ceased to leave my subconscious the past week. The first is the issue of dreaming...goal-making. The kind of stuff we used to do in school. I want to be an astronaut. I bet I had 15 kids in my fifth grade class say they wanted to be astronauts-I mean, they really wanted to be one...avid watchers of all the Apollo missions, Star Trek, Star Wars, and everything NASA. I don't know one astronaut. Not one. Why is that? At what age did we come face-to-face with the "reality wall" and be forced to climb over. It's not an easy wall to scale, but inevitable, it seems. Our inner being (and our mothers) told us to dream big! Dream with infinity in mind! But, nevertheless, we've all seemed to ascend that wall, and fall headlong, down into the adhesive, ultimately endless, and bitter, reality-induced everyday.

But, why?

Why can I name only a handful of people that have legitimately and thoroughly changed the world? Hmmm? I'm waiting for an answer...?

I feel that the same is true for Christians. Those who say that praying the prayer is enough. It's not. There's a call to arms-a command from Christ himself. Not just the Great Commission, but the entire personification of God through Christ relied on this...this craziness...this radicalness...this scandalousness. I want to know that Church. I want to know those people. There's a pastor that said, "We need to be Unusual Soldiers for Christ." Unusual soldiers. Soldiers. That's not a normal person-but rather, they're filled with crazy ways of thinking. Crazy ways of doing life.

God was the same way. "I tell you what, instead of fighting Jericho's army, grab your trumpets and lyres and, on the seventh day of lapping the city, shout and play as loud as you can!" (my interpretation of Joshua 6). God was a radical thinker! However, it worked. And it worked perfectly.

I'm running out of time, so we'll leave my other thought 'til later. However, I once saw a commercial that piqued my "inner astronaut spirit" awhile ago. Apple came out with their "Think Different" advertisements (some of the best ever, if I might say), in which they released one entitled, "Here's to the Crazy Ones". I've copied the dialogue below:

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, Are the ones who do.


Ahh, fresh air at last. I especially love that last line...it starts with a dream, a belief, a mindset. Today, reexamine your wayward journey. If you find that there might be something missing, there is. If you ask yourself, "How did I get here?"...revert back, for a moment, to that fifth grade mentality. Even if you don't want to be an astronaut, dream big. The world needs you...

Do you ever feel as if you've become the worst version of yourself? Doing the precise opposite of what you promised yourself and God you'd not do again? Reneging on commitments made? I read about this in Eugene Peterson's Romans 7:

What I don't understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can't be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God's command is necessary. But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does.

I thank God today that He didn't just send us the Law, but instead, sent his most prized possession so that not only would we be forgiven, but so that we would truly live...a life without condemnation from sin, and a life full of amazing grace.