Short Essay

Here's a short essay I wrote for an application prompt: thought I might share it.

"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered." - GK Chesterton

In life on earth, there are no certainties. Time changes, powers shift, plans fall through, and people's opinions sway. In such chaos, people always are searching for answers. What we, as believers, know is that there is only one true Answer - one unshakable Rock we can hold onto. That rock is our Lord and Savior. What does that mean for us, as humans in an unpredictable world? It means we have eternal certainty. We may not know what will happen in our lives, but we do know our eternal destination. We also know that in our love and devotion to God, He will use us as willing vessels to carry out His plan and bring Him glory. This is our highest calling as Christians; to be used in this way.
How should this effect the way we make plans and respond to life's unpredictability? Should we despair when things don't go as we've planned, as some do? Should we "man up" and be resourceful, living with the motto "When life gives you lemons...", as others do? Perhaps, we, as believers, are called to a greater attitude. We know that God has a infinitely wise plan for our lives. We might be wise by human standards, and know how to make good decisions and plan ahead well, but what happens when God has a different plan for our lives? What happens when the certainties we built our plans around falls through? This doesn't have to be a life plan, either. This can be as simple as being stopped by a red light that we wish we could have made it through. Our fallen nature's reaction is usually to grumble and complain. "What an inconvenience. This isn't how I wanted it to happen!"
Is that the right attitude to have? The Bible would tell us otherwise. Through His word, we know that God does nothing without reason - His omnipresent, all-wise reason.
With that in mind, how should we react when something unexpected and "inconvenient" comes our way? Should we wonder if we're doing something wrong? Should we try to fight it so we can have our way in the end? No - we should not see these changes as setbacks. We should see these unexpected turns as God working in our lives. He is very involved in our lives, and He will interact with us however He sees fit. If we run into a something we see as a setback, our reaction should be to stop, take a look at our circumstances, and go to God to decipher His will. A change doesn't have to be inconvenient, rather, it should be seen as all part of God's plan for us - the greatest adventure we'll ever have. 


God bless!

Exposition

A couple people wanted to know what I was talking about with Shaeffer's philosophy about civilization. So, without further adieu, here's another thing to ponder on.

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

Here are the stages.

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage

I think we're about to topple out of Apathy and into Dependance.

What do you think?

Allegiance to a Nation

No, I do not usually do policically-themed posts. And this one is not. I simply feel I must say something in response to the uproar everywhere.

Dear citizens,
 
Why do you whine about the government? That is neither "patriotic", as you claim to be, nor is it going to change anything. // I've got news for you, people. America is on the decline. Wake up and smell the apathy. Wise minds in the past knew it was happening. Unless you think you know better than Francis Schaeffer, here is my suggestion to you: Make your patriotism that of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Nations rise, and nations fall, but God remains the same. I think it would be in your best interest to latch onto the One and Unchanging instead of angsting over a nation in it's death throes.

That is all.
Peace.

Vote!

So I just submitted a design to Threadless. I think it has a pretty good chance! I get several thousand dollars if I get this printed, so I'm counting on you all! ;)

(Make sure to check the "I'd buy it as a tee!" box before putting in the number score.) :)

Trust

I suppose it goes without saying that it's been too long since I've written something. I guess I've just been lacking motivation, and whenever I come across something I want to blog about, I always forget I want to blog about it until it's too late and I've forgotten.
Whatever the case may be, I'll just spill part of my brain on here to fill some space.

In the next couple weeks, I'll be having a meeting with an MCAD counselor, continuing to look for a job, and (God-willing) be getting my company's website up. Lot to do, and I'm pretty excited. The job thing is still weighing really heavy on me, though, so if you all could be praying, I'd really appreciate it. :)


Lately I've been preaching to myself a lot about trusting in God. It's something I do from day-to-day, but it's not perfectly easy sometimes. There's a LOT in my future/near future that's unknown. I know God has a plan for my ultimate good, but I'm sort of the planner/Mr. Fix-It who likes to have everything figured out. Not the most awesome combination. I have to remind myself daily that my view of the world is not like His. They say hindsight is 20-20. I can look back and see ways He's worked that I deeply appriciate now, but they were hard - and I did not appriciate them at the time. God's got a 20-20 view of past, present, and future (and probably other dimentions we have no idea even exist), so it goes without saying that His plan is better than anything I could cook up.
Advice? Remind yourself of that fact daily. It's easy to get caught up in worry (a struggle I have, personally) and doubt, but He will see His work though to completion. There are situations where we can get frustrated or upset ("God, what are you doing??"), but don't let those define your interaction with Him. It's not wrong to have questions for God, but it is wrong to question His judgment. Trust in the Creator who made the world, gave it life, sustains it, and loves it. It sounds like a good idea to me. :)


'Night, all. Leave some comments so I know people actually read this. :P

Nate

Consider Yourself Warned

 Lately, it has been my habit to lay awake late at night letting my mind run on overhaul. It kills any hope of early bird rising, but it's also a time where my mind can work in the quiet. I've had a lot of extremely weighty issues I've been grappling with. I usually jot them down so I don't forget it.
On a seemingly unrelated note, I've realized I'm been really bad about updating my blog.
The solution?
I'm now going to be jotting down my late night thoughts here for your consideration/commendation/comdemnation. I know I run the risk of actually exposing how much of a freak I am to the general public, but I take consolation in the fact that all the freakiness is Jesus Freakiness.

My thought for the night:

I've always been intrigued by things extra-terrestrial. Here, by extra-terrestrial, I don't mean I'm obbsessed with aliens or sci-fi novels. I mean I'm intrigued by things that are not of this earth. Specifically, what it was like before the creation of the world, and what the end of the world and beyond will be like. Revelation is one of my favorites books of the Bible, if that gives you any idea of what I mean.
People often wonder what hell is like. Is it dark? - Like a giant, floating, black void of pain? Or rather, is it like the commercially popular picture of an underground, stalactited, flaming pit?
I myself have reached the conclusion that it is complete separation from God. The Holy Spirit, His very presence, everything. That probably first strikes you as blasphemous. God is omnipresent. There is no place that God isn't.
I absolutely agree with God's omnipresence. I am in no way saying that there are places He can't control. I do wonder, however, if there is a place that He has purposefully removed Himself from.
To the unbeliver, what is it they want? Ultimately, they do not want God. Hell is giving them what they want - no God. I find it interesting to read about The Void (in the first couple verses of Genisis where God's spirit hovered over the Void - also referred to as waters or depths). I wonder if the Void was a place devoid (Ah ha) of God's presence, and He filled it with land, light, and life as He filled it with Himself.
While that was a little off topic, I brought up The Void to give you a mental picture of what I think hell is. It is worse to be alive and without God than to be dead.
And we will be alive. When we die, we get new bodies whether we go to heaven or hell. A friend of mine raised the objection that a human soul can not exist without God. It would literally cease to exsist. Again, this is all my musing and wondering - I wonder what the implications of a new body would be. Are the new bodies actual self-sustaining, eternal bodies? This would seem to be Biblical. The Bible says we will be constantly rejoicing and worshiping God in heaven - because we want to. We don't get reprogrammed to be robotic worshipers in heaven. We are very much free (free indeed!) and what we want to do with that freedom is love our amazing God.
So if those in hell have self-sustaining bodies - then that, my friends, is true torment. Living - being very much alive - completely without God. I believe one would be able to look back on his life and see all the times that God gave him a chance. All the times where the evidence was clear. All the times that he spit in God's face. And he was wrong, and it is too late.
That, my dear readers, is true hell.
Praise God for His amazing, undeserving, and matchless love and grace! I am so grateful that I will not have to face hell - whatever it might be like. I have a better place to look forward to, and I am - to put it lightly - stoked.
Challenge for the night: If you too feel this way, I would encourage you to make it plain in your life. I am also growing in this. We have a better place. This earth is nothing compared to our futures. As that is the case, we should live our lives solely for the One who we'll be with forever. Whatever we can do, whoever we can witness to - it's all living future-minded. If people think we're freaks, it's sweet, 'cause we want to be different. If they hate us and kill us, then we have the last, gloriously happy laugh, because we are in heaven. Praise God.

'Night all.

Project: Typography Video

This is a project I've been working on with a friend for Desiring God. It's currently on the front page, and I heard something about DG wanting to distribute it to catholic churches around the nation because of Obama's recent address.  I'm actually not even 100% happy with it, just because we had to leave out several of our favorite ideas due to time restraints. It gets the point across, though. That's the important part.