Thoughts from this Week
I watched the movie Grand Canyon last Sunday. I had not seen that movie in several years and was surprise by the poignant theme. I came away from that movie thinking/rethinking a lot of stuff in my own life as to how I am living and how that may/may not affect my world, my community.
Fast forward to Friday I am driving to work and I take a different route one that included me stopping by the yuppie Safeway(have you seen the ones with track lighting in the cheese/wine section?) for an energy bar before work. I decided to go up Cornell to 158th and drove by the large building I drive by on the 26 occasionally. I always looked closely at this building wondering what it was. They were obviously doing some sort of additions and thought it was perhaps a new college building or perhaps a high school, or a home for corporate offices of some sort. To my amazement it was a church. I saw the sign for a presbyterian church and was speechless. Now what I am about to write may seem judgemental...but I need to pose the question...why? I don't get it. I don't. Multi-million dollar(guessing...not really sure of the exact numbers) building projects when there are people with no food or clothes for people in the community. I just don't get the world today. I don't understand how we have a society in which the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. I was angry when I saw that it was a church. I am not trying to be a bleeding heart liberal but I feel something is severely wrong with this picture.
I was reading Blue like Jazz by Donald Miller again this week and he writes about problems. He states that the problem does not lie in the politics of the world, the church, but essentially the problem lies within us. He states that the only true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change would have to start with the individual. I whole-heartedly agree. It does begin with me.
When I have these moments of enlightenment I am jacked up and ready to make a change. I harbor these utopian ideas of evolving into a better person. I need to give more, consume less, live a life of simplicity. Give to the poor, I don't really need to buy make-up or shoes, I can give it away. I don't need to drive or buy products that are not good for the environment. I make list after list of all of the things I want to change about myself, my habits, only to be disappointed at my lack of discipline and follow-through. So I ask myself, how do I make changes in my life? Miller says that the path to joy winds through a dark valley of our own depravity.
I know that are times in my life when I have looked at my own crap and been so completely discouraged at my progress. I see who I am and all that I aspire to be and it makes me sad that I fall SO short of my expectations. The only thing redeemable thing about my life is the fact that as I may be overly critical of myself,God is not that way. In fact he is just proud of me that I get up and make the effort to live my life and want him to be apart of that. I think that things will really start to change not only in my own heart, but in the hearts of men and women in this world is when we see that we are a really screwed up people in need of someone to save us. Yes the problem is in me, but there is someone who wants to hold me, love me, and show me who I was intended to be without all of my self-absorption. In the light of that knowledge we CAN as Eugene Peterson says be made into our true selves, our child-of-God selves.
Peace
Kat
posted by Kat @ 1:00 AM
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