john stott & new quarter

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“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as 'God on the cross.' In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering. 'The cross of Christ ... is God’s only self-justification in such a world” as ours....' 'The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak; they rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but thou alone.” 

― John R.W. Stott, Cross

“[Christian rebellion] arises from the doctrine of mankind made in the image of God, and therefore protests against all forms of dehumanization. It sets itself against the social injustices which insult God the Creator, seeks to protect human beings from oppression and longs to liberate them… it protests against every authoritarian regime, whether of the left or of the right, which discriminates against minorities, denies people their civil rights, forbids the free expression of opinions or imprisons people for their views alone.” 

― John R.W. Stott

“Jesus never concealed the fact that his religion included a demand as well as an offer. Indeed, the demand was as total as the offer was free. If he offered men his salvation, he also demanded their submission. He gave no encouragement whatever to thoughtless applicants for discipleship. He brought no pressure to bear on any inquirer. He sent irresponsible enthusiasts away empty. Luke tells of three men who either volunteered, or were invited, to follow Jesus; but no one passed the Lord’s test. The rich young ruler, too, moral, earnest and attractive, who wanted eternal life on his own terms, went away sorrowful, with his riches intact but with neither life nor Christ as his possession…The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half built towers—the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so called 'nominal Christianity.' In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great, soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism…The message of Jesus was very different. He never lowered his standards or modified his conditions to make his call more readily acceptable. He asked his first disciples, and he has asked every disciple since, to give him their thoughtful and total commitment. Nothing less than this will do.” 

― John R.W. Stott, Basic Christianity

tomorrow is the beginning of spring quarter. out of my solitude with God today, i will peptalk the future me for the next three months of my life:

prioritize your emotional, spiritual, mental, social, and physical health. know that it's okay and normal to be in your twenties and not have your life figured out. you fret and are easily overwhelmed and are of little faith; cling to the disciplines of the faith with the entirety of your being engaged because it is out of solitude with your Maker that you will 1) thrive and not just feebly survive and 2) be seen and fully known by your Heavenly Father who desires to carry your chaotic mess. interrogate your downcast soul and remind it to rejoice because God is worthy of this response, and because all things are purpose-full in the outworking of your salvation.

sidenotes;
this season of life as i currently see it is marked by blessed delight, adoration, fear, weariness, choked panting, deep breaths

1 samuel 29

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1 samuel 17-31 details david & saul's journey; the author intentionally juxtaposes the two men to highlight how they both egregiously fail and get themselves tangled in impossible situations, but they respond differently in where they put their trust. this is what sets them apart from each other -- not because one is intrinsically better than the other, but because one bows to the King in his helplessness. on 1 samuel 29:

"Saul goes off to consult a witch; David strengthens himself in the Lord his God. There is the difference. Saul never seems to repent, never seems to have a heart for God. David does have a heart for God and does repent. David, like most of us, finds that many of his turning points are during times of suffering and sorrow, in the dark times of his life. But in this dark day of David’s life, when he has no one else to turn to, he turns to God.

How does he do it? How does he strengthen himself in the Lord his God? We should note that the author gives us little detail here. He does not give us a formula, a series of fail-proof steps. We live in a day when people want a quick fix with a sure cure, and often by the performance of a set of neatly laid out steps – a formula. In the final analysis, I do not think the Christian life is lived by formulas, but by truths and principles. There are do’s and don’ts, but these are not formulas. Let us note here that David finds his spiritual strength in the Lord his God.

...If David strengthened himself in the Lord, we can probably infer that just as Jonathan did earlier, David must have reminded himself anew of the character of God and the promises of God. If God is who He is, in terms of His character (His attributes), we can be assured that what He promises, He will do. Paul put it this way:

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6).

For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day (2 Timothy 1:12; see also Jude 1:24-25).

...David not only strengthens himself in the Lord, David inquires of the Lord. He seeks after God. He seeks to know the will of God in this situation, and then he does it. How different David is from Saul in this regard. David’s strength then seems to come from contemplating who God is, what He has promised, and what He wants us to do. David may have gotten himself and others into a lot of trouble, due to a foolish decision, but he also turns back to the God to whom he has entrusted himself." source

“Jesus of Nazareth always comes asking disciples to follow him--not merely 'accept him,' not merely 'believe in him,' not merely 'worship him,' but to follow him: one either follows Christ, or one does not. There is no compartmentalization of the faith, no realm, no sphere, no business, no politic in which the lordship of Christ will be excluded. We either make him Lord of all lords, or we deny him as Lord of any.” -Lee Camp

with all that i am, all my messiness and inabilities and stupid ways, i want this. bruised knees, callused feet, eager hands, heart splayed open and life surrendered to the King who reveals himself to me in the word as a God who delights not in my suffering but in my dependence on him, my trust in him, my obedience to his commandments. he delights in rescuing me. [list of god's saving acts]

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i am currently sobered by the enormity of what it means to follow christ and by the narrowness of this path. i feel grief as i think upon people in my life who choose not to surrender and follow. have mercy god.

limbo

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it's been brought to my attention that as God moves people into different seasons of life (through different struggles, life stages, milestones) -- that my knee-jerk reaction is to resist change and dig my feet into the ground that bows to God and moves regardless of my petty whines of protest. i am just about as equipped to hold onto certain relationships in certain seasons as i am to hold water in my shaking hands. this sentiment might just be particularly apparent because at this moment i feel like i'm in limbo - i have been groomed in this education system to be prepared for nothing. i am a twenty year old, unmarketable nobody with a lot of hopes and dreams and with little experience. i don't know how anybody gets from place a to place b in their lives; i have a feeling our parents knew little more than we currently do when they were in their twenties. i have a feeling nobody ever feels like they have their lives together in neat packages of achievements and structured predictability. i have no idea (this is probably a lie) why i feel so little peace recently; i have allowed the noisiness of life to shake me from my center of peace and joy and idk! i am sorely in need of some type of healing of some type of sickness because something feels really off

what do i know to be true?
what are my anchors?
jesus is always worthy of praise and rejoicing is he not?

sidenotes;

hohum one day this will no longer be an issue foregrounded in my mind 24/7

needy

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this quarter i think i knew i was heartsick but i was blithely unaware of the extent. it was obvious when i laid my head to sleep but only met layers of fears and worries masked in outrageous and nightmarish fantasies of hypotheticals. it was most obvious when i woke up in the morning and lay paralyzed for half an hour to forty five minutes, weighed down by heavy limbs and a weak heart. somehow rest became an ordeal. in my heartsickness i also twisted my care for certain people as my desire to comfort leaked out as strained and silent begging. my hands, outstretched, reached to give what i thought i had but the silhouette it outlined on the ground was of profoundly empty and wretched and shaking hands reaching to grab and possess what i didn't have. i want to say i should have paid attention to the symptoms sooner - but that would suggest that i could have done something different, that i have the power to change this heartsickness. the wonderfully liberating implication of my helplessness is precisely that i have become cognizant of my sickness and my neediness, and now i can begin to receive healing. today god's grace has shed light upon the architecture of my heart/mind to reveal that it is currently characterized by lonely and chaotic streets running between buildings of quasi-processed materials. my atrophied lungs are hungrily filling with the realization that i was feeling lonely and it hurts like stabs of cold air. so simple, so painful, so freeing, so healing!

yesterday i spent time with e and today after sleeping 11 hours i ran some errands and then did devos near the lake and read henri nouwen's turn thy mourning into dancing for three hours at the bookstore. in kind of a clunky, awkward, rusty way, i am re-acclimating to resting while maintaining a vivid orientation of purposefulness independent of my task-driven schedule. also, today i was attacked by a canadian goose hahaha herp

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my awful migraine has somehow magically abated after i finished writing this
wau thanks brain
edit// 3.20; last night i had a dream that she was complaining about me as a "problem" on the phone to her sister and i was pounding the table with all my strength and screaming my protest and she completely ignored me.

20

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i'm 20 and i'm a mess.

i am a mess of fears and desires, some experience and no experience, and plenty of imaginaries. but i also remember being 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. i remember always feeling like a mess of fears and desires.  it's strange how the visual closeness of those numbers in text form seem to violently and flippantly gloss over all that has happened between each of those numbers; but even as they cannot embody my memories, my memory does a similar thing. my memories are abridged and i'm left with a vaguely helpless sense of loss.

but i'm none of those ages, i am 20 and i'm a mess but i'm still here. i can also be melodramatic sometimes

"My hour in Carmelite chapel is more important than I can fully know myself. It is not an hour of deep prayer, nor a time in which I experience a special closeness to God; it is not a period of serious attentiveness to the divine mysteries. I wish it were! On the contrary, it is full of distractions, inner restlessness, sleepiness, confusion, and boredom. It seldom, if ever, pleases my senses. But the simple fact of being for one hour in the presence of the Lord and of showing him all that I think, feel, sense, and experience, without trying to hide anything, must please him. Somehow, somewhere, I know that he loves me, even though I do not feel that love as I can feel a human embrace, even though I do not hear a voice as I hear human words of consolation, even though I do not see a smile as I can see a human face. Still the Lord speaks to me, looks at me, and embraces me there, where I am still unable to notice it. The only way I become aware of his presence is in that remarkable desire to return to that quiet chapel and be there without any real satisfaction. Yes, I notice, maybe only retrospectively, that my days and weeks are different days and weeks when they are held together by these regular "useless" times. God is greater than my senses, greater than my thoughts, greater than my heart.  I do believe that he touches me in places that are unknown even to myself. I seldom can point directly to these places; but when I feel this inner pull to return again to that hidden hour of prayer, I realize that something is happening that is so deep that it becomes like the riverbed through which the waters can safely flow and find their way to the open sea." -Henri J. Nouwen

this just happened

yea

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five more days
1!!!

social media

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i'm fidgety and easily distracted, i have 30 pages worth of essay writing to do in the coming week and it may be prime time to panic maybe? i'm gonna look back at this post in a month's time and not even remember the details of this week.

also i find that i am often pondering about humanity in broad hopeless generalizations because i haven't the resources in my lonesome puny brain to comprehensively understand the complexities of why people do the things they do. i bring this up because i have become increasingly conscious of why i post things i post and as a result, i have made private many of my old posts and have also refrained from posting things after bringing it before God first and finding him a satisfying enough audience. at the end of the day this is why i must fall back upon the anchor of being still before God and rest in the assurance of his sovereignty. i post things because i want to build up my readers, and that maybe in my ruminations they may also be drawn to the Lord in my heart who is first to hear all my ramblings. my prayer is that in an age in which reality doesn't seem to be reality until it is sedimented in self-glorified, surreally plastic light on some social media platform, you and i would withdraw to contentment in the only one who is a worthy audience, and that we would use social media to draw people to the quiet place where God reigns in quietness and peace. with that, i shall return back to the confines of my hermit essay writing. halp me i want hugs and people :c

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y0lolol
haven't been sleeping well lately idk?