Et Omnia Vanitas

I have far too much on my mind at the moment...and my hope is that I might be able to spill enough if it on here that I will be able to function....
Relationships are interesting things. There are elements of a relationship that are impossible to understand. Certain doubts or fears that can creep up, cannot be put into words but are felt all the same....and without really understanding the doubt or the fear, how can you go about finding the cure? Is the cure also as subliminal as the fear...something only felt and not understood? Perhaps the cure too, like the fear, can creep up and take over, without any needed help or initiative from the person. This really is something I can only guess and try to describe with pretty words....It is a question far beyond me to which I never expect to find the answer.

Life itself seems to be something that cannot truly be understood. Oh, we try to understand it. We analyze until there is no meaning left. We fit all the things we think we understand into their own little boxes and tell ourselves that we have it figured out...but in the end it is vain. Life is not something to be grasped by formulas and analysis.

And joy? What the hell is joy? Is joy when you get the promotion you wanted, or find the love of you life? I think not...money only satisfies for so long, and more often than not heartbreak follows closely after love, constantly nipping at its heels. Is joy when everything in your life is going smoothly and everything seems to be working out for you? I doubt it...for every climb, there is just as great a fall. I am tired....so tired I can't even tell you...of defining my life by my circumstances. Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas. "Vanity vanity all is vanity." Whenever we attempt to find our purpose, our joy, the definition of our lives, by the material things in our lives or by our relationships, we will always be left feeling empty.  Circumstantial joy is a glass better left untouched.

The joy that comes from the Lord is the only thing that will not leave us feeling unfulfilled and alone at the end of the day. It is the only thing that will stay with us when everything else has fallen apart. It is something that can only be found by being in a love relationship with Him, and no where else. All is vain, aside from the life we now have in Christ Jesus.

A Lack of Sincerity

Why why why? Why do I time and time again attempt to reshackle myself? Why do I try and wear my old tattered and disgusting garments of death and sin when I could be clothed in the all surpassing rightouseness of Christ? Sometimes I don't even understand myself. I am so frustrated with the choices that I make....

What can you do when you have said sorry too many times and it ceases to mean anything to you? When you get to the point where saying sorry is your thoughtless knee-jerk reaction to when you do something bad and requires no more thought than breathing...at this point, saying sorry is not worth saying. It has become meaningless because it has been made into something thats only purpose is to appease your own sense of guilt and nothing more. If the ultimate reason the words "I'm sorry" escape your lips is because you feel like shit for what you have done and you want to feel better about yourself, then you are better off keeping silent. Having true sorrow over something means having more concern over someones elses pain than your own. If it is true sorrow, it should come hand in hand with repentance. If it doesnt, than you are still more concerned with yourself than with how your actions effect others. Selfishness is like poison, dripping and burning and slowly killing and suffocating you. And until you can force your thoughts away from yourself and cease your self pity, just like a poison it will grow stronger and stronger with time and choke out your life. The only, only way to get something like this out of your system is through earnest prayer and seeking God's intervention. God is the only medicine that will heal poison like this, because to change something like this requires a change of heart, which only God can bring about. To be able to truly say sorry again, you must ask God to give you a heart of integrity once more, and to grant you true sorrow over what you have done. Thanks be to God that I am chained to His grace and nothing can seperate me from Him.

Amazing Grace

Today I am in pain and I feel like complaining, so that is exactly what I am going to do. I have had 4 cups of coffee and 3 advil, which helped with the head, but my pain is not just physical. I often wonder why I do certain things. I know something is wrong and that God would not want me to do it, and yet because it is something I want, I do it anyway. Living life in the moment is not all that it's cracked up to be. I often feel like Paul, talking of how though he wants to do what is right, all he can ever seem to do is what he doesn't want to do, which is to keep on sinning. Often I find myself crying out with him, "Oh wretched man that I am". Sometimes admittance and confession is helpful, after all, pretending to be fine and living a lie will only hurt you. But we cannot stop there. It needs to be followed up with repentance and change. It must be the first step on the road to redemption, followed by many more steps. If it is not, if we stop and admittance, then it is a pointless endeavor. Because it is easy to see and admit to a problem and do nothing to change. To just accept yourself as you are and pretend that it is alright. If you ask me, it seems that living like that will cause you to fall into the category of a hearer of the Word but not a doer of the Word. You see your problem and know it is wrong, but you just leave it alone and "accept yourself". Jesus takes me the way I am and died for me while i was still a sinner, but now as and adopted Son of God, he doesn't tell me that it is alright to continue living as though I am still a sinner. By no means should we sin more that grace may abound all the more!! Though He loves me as I am and forgives me when I make mistakes, I am not to use the free gift of His grace as an excuse. I am to live for Him and turn from my old self. Don't get me wrong, by no means am I saying that getting rid of the sin in our lives is something that happens over night or is something that we can get rid of ourselves. We cannot even take the first steps without the Lord convicting us and giving us the strength. But we must let Him. He cannot work in us if we harden our hearts and refuse to let Him in.  And so, if you are one of my brothers or sisters in Christ and you are reading this, I implore you to please listen to me and learn by my example. To not make the same mistakes that I have made in my life. Do not be content to accept your mistakes and leave them in your life. If you have  sin in your life right now, get on your knees before your Lord. Beg Him to take it from you, to give you the strength to live for Him, and to turn from your sinful self. Through Christ, all things are possible. "Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Stumbling Down this Broken Road

     I don't really know how to put what I am saying into words, but I figured I might as well try anyway. I mean, what have I got to lose? I won't be able to explain it very well and no one will know what the heck I am talking about, but that happens most of the time anyway.
     How is it that we can define the purpose of our lives? Of course, anyone who grew up in any reformed church will immediately start up with the first catechism question, "What is the chief end of man?", and then follow up with the answer, "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever." But finding a practical application for this in your life is just a little more complicated. So I know that my life should be centered on giving glory to my Father, and enjoying being in fellowship with Him. But how does that translate into the direction of my life. How does that help me in deciding between going to work for this church or that church, moving there or staying here. It seems to me I can just as well do one or the other for God's glory. So how do I decide between these potentially life-changing directions? Sometimes I feel like I am just stumbling down this broken road like a blind man, with no idea whether I am going forwards or backwards. So what can we do to find the direction to go? What can we do to find our specific purpose in life? Honestly I am not very sure, besides earnest prayer I'm not sure what else you can do.

     And how does this first catechism question give me purpose, practically? In other words, how does it give me the answer to the question of , "God put me on this earth to _____." Or, I guess a better way to word that would be, "God out me on this earth to glorify and enjoy Him by _____." Everybody always seems so sure of what they want to do with their lives, but allow me to join the minority and admit that I am not. Sooner or later we have to choose which road we are going to take with our lives. Now I am not talking about choosing between the straight and narrow road or the the easy and wide road that leads to destruction. I am talkng about choosing between this straight and narrow or that straight and narrow. When we have 3 or 4 different paths laid out before us, what is the ultimate decider that will finally push us down a path, and even after we are on one, how do we know it is the one we are supposed to be on? I think perhaps the only safe thing to say is that it requires much earnest prayer and seeking of God's will. This isn't the direction I was planning on going when I started typing this, but the more and more I wrote, the more I saw that there is nothing we can do on our own to find meaning or direction for our lives. All things are in vain outside of the Lord, so seeking the road we should take on our own really is a pointless endeavour. Ok, well I think this is enough rambling for now...

I figured this was fitting, considering what I was talking about:

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The Road Not Taken






TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,


And sorry I could not travel both


And be one traveler, long I stood


And looked down one as far as I could


To where it bent in the undergrowth;






Then took the other, as just as fair,


And having perhaps the better claim,


Because it was grassy and wanted wear;


Though as for that the passing there


Had worn them really about the same,






And both that morning equally lay


In leaves no step had trodden black.


Oh, I kept the first for another day!


Yet knowing how way leads on to way,


I doubted if I should ever come back.






I shall be telling this with a sigh


Somewhere ages and ages hence:


Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—


I took the one less traveled by,


And that has made all the difference.



                                          

Severing the Bonds

There is something I don't understand. What is it that defines the bond between two people? What is it that defines what will make a relationship grow stronger or fade and break? And why is it that one person can try as hard as he (or she) can to continue a friendship, and in the end it will still break? This is the question to which I have no answer at the present moment. I don't even know if there is an answer. But it seems to me that though one may pour his heart and soul into a friendship, and spend his nights lying awake agonizing over it, it is all in vain. Unless the desire to continue the friendship is mutual, nothing short of divine intervention can save it. Perhaps it is just life. One person has his own personal experiences that change him in his own personal ways, and likewise with the other, and before you know it both people have changed and suddenly discover that they aren't so much alike one another any more. From this perspective perhaps it shouldn't shock me to think of one person becoming disinterested in continuing a friendship. However, being able to logically see why doesn't for one minute take away any of the pain or loss at thinking of a long and dear frienship coming to it's close. Perhaps the only thing that will drive away the pain is turning attention away from the problem and putting the focus on Jesus intead. To gaze at Jesus and only glance at the storm, as I have heard it put by someone. But I will save that for another post...

The Journey

So this is my first time ever doing anything like this. I am not even really sure what to put on here. I was just looking through some of my friends blogs, and I decided this would be a good place for me to be able to dump my feelings and/or thoughts on life, or whatever random things I feel like talking about. I don't really intend to try and make it sound pretty or be full of deep thoughts, but just a place for me to put whatever I am feeling or thinking. So if it is boring or offensive, I apologize, but since I am doing this more for myself than anyone else, that's just the way it is going to be. Well I think that's it for now. More later when I decide what direction I really want to take with this thing..