2011 was, to say the least, a rough year. I graduated jobless, tried and failed to find some new opportunities, and finally settled in the insurance industry — a very stable job that I thank God for, but one that makes me feel a little dead inside. I ended a relationship I thought would never end. And for the for the first time in five years, my work schedule is keeping me from doing youth ministry.

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the Lord is doing (and let’s be serious, we all know how well that works out).  But as 2012 dawns, I find myself thinking about one particular story.

Potiphar’s wife wanted Joseph, but Joseph refused, so she had him thrown in prison. Some time later, the cupbearer and the baker were also imprisoned. They both had dreams, which Joseph interpreted for them. The cupbearer was going to be released, so Joseph told him, “When all goes well with you, remember me and show me kindness; mention me to Pharaoh and get me out of this prison” (40:14). As it turns out, “The chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph; he forgot him. When two full years had passed, Pharaoh had a dream” (40:23-41:1).

So Joseph, by God’s will, was stuck in prison for more than two years. I imagine him watching the cupbearer leave, hope sprouting in his heart. I imagine him waiting by the door for days, weeks, months, wondering when the cupbearer will find the nerve to mention Joseph to Pharaoh. And then I picture Joseph realizing the cupbearer has forgotten him, and thinking to himself, “Maybe this is where I’ll die.” Maybe this is all there is.

I don’t know why God’s time is not our time. I can’t fathom a thousand years as a drop in the bucket. For me, a thousand years is ten times my life span — if I’m lucky. But I know that God loves me very much, and gave me a passion for students and studying and his word. So I hope that one year is enough, that in 2012 I can return to my passions. Here’s what I want to do:

• I want to have the time to do youth ministry again. On January 6 I’ll find out if my schedule changes beginning in February. If my work day ends by 5:30, I can make it to youth group and retreats and things.
• I want to start my master’s in the fall. I’ve applied to four schools: Oxford, Durham, Gordon-Conwell, and Fuller. The first two are MAs in the UK; the second two are MDivs in Boston and Pasadena, respectively. To get to any of these four schools, I must receive scholarships for most of the cost of schooling. I’ll start hearing back in April.
• I want to feel like I belong somewhere. I have never felt more lonely than I did in 2011.

Praise the Lord for hope, faith, and love. Here’s to a new year!

Clockwise from top left: Durham, Oxford, Fuller, Gordon-Conwell

O LORD, the God who saves me,
day and night I cry out before you.

May my prayer come before you;
turn your ear to my cry.

For my soul is full of trouble
and my life draws near the grave.

I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am like a man without strength.

I am set apart with the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
who are cut off from your care.

You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths.

Your wrath lies heavily upon me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
Selah

You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;

my eyes are dim with grief.
I call to you, O LORD, every day;
I spread out my hands to you.

Do you show your wonders to the dead?
Do those who are dead rise up and praise you?
Selah

Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Destruction?

Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

But I cry to you for help, O LORD;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.

Why, O LORD, do you reject me
and hide your face from me?

From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death;
I have suffered your terrors and am in despair.

Your wrath has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me.

All day long they surround me like a flood;
they have completely engulfed me.

You have taken my companions and loved ones from me;
the darkness is my closest friend.

Why is “normalcy” a word?

It doesn’t sound like a word. It sounds like somebody made it up in 5th period social studies.

It doesn’t look like a word. It’s looks like somebody was trying to type “normally” and messed up.

It doesn’t even feel like a word. I don’t like it. But I’ve heard it twice this week, and it’s in the dictionary (at least, at merriam-webster.com, and they’re pretty legit).

So I guess I have to accept the fact that “normalcy” is, in fact, a word. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to use it. I’m just searching for a sense of normality here.

I was ahead in homework.

That’s right. I had done all of my reading and assgnments through Wednesday. I could actually start reading for Thursday of all days! It’s just not possible!

For a moment I let myself fantasize about what I could now say: I’m taking 15 credits of intense, upper-division coursework. I’m successfully the DC of a hall. I’m a volunteer with a youth group. And now, I have free time.

What would I do with that free time? Hang out with my closest friends? Go to a basketball game? Watch a tv show — dare I even suggest it?

Then, in my 4:30 class, the professor said, “Everyone got through that Elmer chapter, right?”

And I thought to myself, Who the heck is Elmer?

And then I remembered the one thing you must remember at Covenant College:

You will never get ahead.

We got home in North Carolina at around 1am and Dad showed us the new Xbox 360, so Peter and Dad and I prompty played Halo for an hour. I went to bed around 2:30.

I woke up around 11am to about an inch of show outside and huge fluffy snowflakes coming down. It was lovely and I relaxed around the house with the family for a while. Mom, Dad, and Peter left around 2 to get groceries, and maybe an hour after they left the power went out for good. I picked up a new book, “Infidel,” and read until it got too dark, then Vincent and I lit candles. When the parents got home we set up a heater and played Monopoly — Dad totally killed all of us. Seriously, he had hotels on the whole first half of the board.

The next morning we still had no power, so we made coffee the old-fashioned way and I settled back into my book. In the early afternoon the power finally came back on; Peter and I turned up the heat and played, I dunno, 5 hours of Halo. I feel like I need to find some high heels and a dress or something so I can prove I’m not a boy, but Peter appreciates it.

We set up the Christmas tree today, covered it in all sorts of lights and ornaments. The angel has a half inch between her head and the ceiling. I feel like we did a pretty good job of decorating.

Now we’re all settled in the living room watching football. Still not particularly girly, but I like my family anyway.

As fall descends the cold weather turns the trees the most beautiful colors of red, orange, yellow, and brown. The leaves are beautiful on the trees and even better on the ground, when Clara and I go more than slightly out of our way to step on particularly crunch-looking leaves. I love when it’s cold enough to see your breath and wear sweaters and, while I don’t actually wear scarves, I still think it’s awesome when they come out.  I love hot drinks of all kinds: coffee, tea, hot chocolate, hot apple cider.

Thanksgiving gives me the opportunity to stuff myself with delicious food after slaving over a hot oven or grill for four or five hours. More imporantly, it gives me the opportunity to hang out with family, talk to people, watch football, play video games — whatever I want, the day is mine for the enjoying. After months of hard work, it’s a day to truly rest.

As frustrating as finals are, I love when I can finally write all those theology papers I’ve been putting off. I love the research, the time spent in the library, the liberating feeling of stapling and turning in the finished product.

And after finals are over, I love the three weeks of Christmas break: long enough to enjoy my family, get some rest, and be ready for another semester. I love picking out the tree and I love how enthusiastic Peter is about decorating it. I love when Dad puts out the string of elves that ring their bells in Christmas tunes. I love the Coca Cola and M&Ms Christmas commericals that are the same every year. I love finally having to wear long johns, gloves, and hats. I absolutely adore the rare snowfall Georgia gets, and I loved it even more in Oregon when the snow would stay for forever.

I think Christmas is the best. Peter is always absolutely stoked about opening presents and it keeps us  all moving. The parades are the best ever. By that I mean, they’re really fun to keep on in the background and glance at occassionally.  The decorations for both Thanksgiving and Christmas rock: the best color combinations, of course, but my particular favorite is Mom’s habit of putting Santa Claus hats on anything and everything (the cowboy statue, the 20-year-dead deer on the wall, the plant in the corner…).

One of my current joys is delicious Starbucks coffee, brewed with cinnamon and nutmeg in with the grounds. Spec-freaking-tacular. It’s why I get up in the morning.

Finally, I love the reminder that God chose to become flesh in order to save sinners who cannot possibly save themselvse. What great love the Father gives us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are. Amen!

In VeggieTales, there is one refrain that Bob and Tomato and Larry the Cucumber remind their listeners of constantly: “You are special, and God loves you very much.” Our generation has taken this to heart: I am special and loved by God. Unfortunately, we have also taken it to an extreme: I am special enough to stand before God. I do enough good things to earn God’s love.

When Jesus gave the parables of the lost sheep, lost coin, and lost son, he was speaking to two groups of people: the “tax collectors and sinners,” or bottom of the religious totem pole, and the “scribes and Pharisees,” or top of the religious totem pole. Interestingly, he was able to tell stories that struck both of their hearts. As Jerram Barrs writes in his book Learning Evangelism from Jesus, the scribes and Pharisees see themselves as “the ninety-nine righteous persons who need not repent” (106), while the tax collectors and sinners “know that they are people who need to be rescued from their lost state” (107). We, however, are in an interesting conundrum: we see ourselves as the main character – that is, the lost sheep, the lost coin, or the lost son – but we feel as special as the scribes and Pharisees. We who have grown up in the church know the point which Jesus is getting at: that God has mercy on the lost. We know from Sunday School that we are lost, and we know from VeggieTales that we are special enough to receive God’s love.

Do you see the problem? When Barrs describes the tax collectors and sinners, he writes, “As they listened, many of them would be saying in their own hearts, ‘Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ They would be amazed that there will actually be a party in heaven for them, for they think that they are not worthy even to lift their eyes up to heaven” (107). When they see Jesus the Shepherd returning with the one lost sheep, they think, “This is not possible that he would be willing to save me. I’m simply not worthy.”

I was so struck by this passage because I could see my response to this story in my own heart. I promptly identify with the correct person – the lost sheep – but I skip the step of realizing my unworthiness. Deep down, I know that I am, in fact, worthy of God’s love. After all, I have been told from childhood that God loves me. Why does God love me? My childhood self isn’t really sure, but there’s no need to worry about that. I look up to heaven unafraid and say, “Come save me God! I know you want to!”

I’ll give you another example of how our culture warps this story. Barrs talks about the common 20^th century depiction of the lost sheep: a young, handsome, slightly effeminate man happily carrying a dainty, pure white sheep through rich green fields of joy. Jesus has not worked hard or sacrificed to find the lost sheep. The lost sheep has not suffered in its rebellion. It is simply a clean-cut, heart-warming story.

The reality is very different. I worked with sheep at a camp one summer and I know one thing about them: they’re stupid. They don’t like help. They don’t ever understand what’s going on and they don’t think about what they’re doing. So for instance, when some counselors attempted to sheer a sheep because of the heat of the summer, it took six counselors to hold the sheep down. They were helping him, but he refused to accept it.

So, I imagine that when the shepherd went out to find the sheep, it took forever. That stupid sheep was just fine grazing off in the fields and didn’t want to come back. He didn’t run to the shepherd; he had all the grass he needed out here, thank you very much. And when he finally got tired enough, probably very late in the evening, he simply lied down, because there was nothing else he could do.

When the shepherd finally found him, the sheep didn’t really know what was going on. He probably kicked and wiggled to avoid being hurt. He was probably large and heavy, gorged from spending all of his time eating grass. He had probably wandered far away from the other sheep, so that by the time the shepherd got him calmed down enough to pick him up and carry him home, both sheep and shepherd were exhausted. Neither of them is spotless or carefree: they are tired, they are worn out, they hurt.

And here we see the difference between the sheep and the shepherd. The sheep, in his stupidity and rebellion, wandered off and brought all this trouble on himself. He deserves to be out in the wilderness. He deserves to be tired, wounded, and weak.

But the shepherd made a conscious choice. He removed himself from the ease and comfort of the 99 well-behaved sheep and went into the wilderness. He accepted the trials of the walk, and when he found the lost sheep, he picked up the sheep, removing the pain and weariness from the sheep and placing the weight of the sheep’s rebellion on his own shoulders. And the story doesn’t end there, because Jesus says the shepherd “lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.” The shepherd is happy to take on the pain and hurt in order to save the sheep! In his great joy he removes all vestiges of rebellion from the sheep’s heart and gives him glory and acceptance. He gives the sheep what he had never had before: love. Love in the sheep’s heart for the shepherd, because the shepherd has loved him all along.

I don’t see this in myself because I believe I am worthy from the start to receive God’s love. I am a Pharisee, a doer of good deeds, a person who walks confidently into the Lord’s throne room based on my own specialness. In reality, I am much more the lost sheep than I think I am. I walk into the throne room because the Lord has stepped off the throne, has taken on my sin, and has defeated it through his own perfection. My specialness is worth nothing. God loves me because of Christ, because of what His Son did. And what His Son did is impossible to fathom.

I was so convicted by this story because I forget my tendency to be both the self-righteous Pharisee and the spotless sheep. I forget that I believe I am good enough to enter heaven and Jesus just shows up because it looks pretty in a painting. I forget the great pain he took on. I forget how I rejected him, how my own sin sent him to the cross. I am so quick to ignore my unworthiness. I am so quick to defiantly stare God in the face and demand a spot at his right hand.

What great mercy the Father has showered on me, then, that he died to save me when I still believed I could enter heaven on my own two feet! What great pain the Shepherd accepted to save the defiant sheep! I hope I can remember my own unworthiness before the throne, so that I can glorify Christ in his astounding worthiness. I hope never to forget that my sin was first put on the righteous Lamb, and then his righteousness was given to me. How wonderful to be a tax collector and sinner! It is only in the realization of my sin that I can humbly accept Jesus’ act of grace.

Wilson, Egypt, world powers in 1919

Translation: formal or dynamic equivalence? Gender neutrality

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Everyone Poops, The Phantom Tollbooth

Iron and Wine, Usher

Deuteronomy 7:6-9, junior highers, “Who trained you to do what you do?”

The Reformation in France — in a soothing Canadian accent

The library, the blink, Starbucks

Fog

The effects of the Intertropical Convergence Zone on India’s climate changes

Chi Alpha, prayer partners, Day of Prayer, bible study, t-shirts, loud noises

And so you see, I just can’t update. I promise to come back eventually.

Now, I’m a pretty black-and-white person. Things are either good or bad. People are either kind or mean. Cereal is either crunchy or mushy and clearly you can’t have both. So when things are good, you might envision me standing in a church looking at a stained-glass window as the sun shines through it. It’s beautiful: brilliant colors which come together to form a magnificent picture. The sun is shining through so strongly that the colors are reflected across furniture in the room, making the chapel a brilliant picture of the glory of God himself.

So here’s the issue: I keep looking around and noticing shadows or even dark holes in the brilliance. Not one but two cases of long-term, committed Christians suddenly, inexplicably turning from the faith. Mourning the anniversary of one death even as I hear about more young lives taken. The faithful, tireless work of believers for the cause of Christ leading to — fruit? The hope of salvation for others? No, just darkness. Just blank stares.

On the one wrist I can see a rope tied, pulling me ever closer to the beauty and joy of the Lord. But on the other wrist the rope is pulling me in the opposite direction, towards sin and hurt and loss. This is why I’m so black and white: because the tension of both circumstances, of a loving God and a murderous demon standing in the same throne room, is too painful. Why does Job have to suffer?

I don’t have an answer and I don’t really know what to do about it. The only thing I can think of is to keep praying, because I’m certain that loving God is sovereign and that murderous demon is not. And eventually we’ll reach Canaan and, while I imagine God will not tell us why Job suffered, at the very least he won’t suffer anymore.

The hardest part, though, is not when they’re fighting with each other or mouthing off. The hardest part is when we’re sitting in front of them, desperately trying to explain the most fundamental aspect of Christianity, and they’re giving us blank stares.

“Do you understand?” we ask.

“Yeah, it all about Jesus,” they answer, trained by Southern Christian society that if they drop the J-word they’ll be good.

“Do you understand grace?”

Blank stares.

It doesn’t matter how much we explain the gospel. I can use the smallest words, the most creative examples, the clearest prose I can think of, and I’ll still get blank stares. Dark hearts don’t understand light. Even worse, dark hearts who grow up in the church think they understand light — and also think they deserve grace. If I can’t explain the cross of Christ, how will I explain anything else?

Praise the Lord for the Spirit, for true grace, and for the love that sent Christ to the cross. Praise the Lord for the gospel, because without it there is no difference between me and these kids. And without the blessed Spirit my job is pointless. Those blank stares won’t go away without the movement of the Spirit, and if you don’t believe me, come hang out with kids for a while. Praise the Lord for sovereignty, because if I could chose my own salvation I would never see Christ. My heart is too rebellious and my eyes are too blinded to do anything else.

I’m not very eloquent today because putting words to sin is just painful. I can see myself in my students: my anger, my pride, my attitude. I just hide it better than they do. I am so, so glad that Jesus has more patience with me than I do with these kids. If Christ gave up on His bride as quickly as I want to give up, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die! But God is love, and love is patient. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. And it never fails. Praise the Lord for that.

I think what I learned at camp today is how important prayer is in ministry. Teaching students about Christ is, of course, commanded and absolutely necessary. But without prayer, teaching can become a self-reliant waste of time, because if I believe that my words can save then I’m damning my students to hell. We must pray that the Spirit would impact the lives of our students with grace and love: that is by far the most important part of ministry. Prayer reminds us who we’re relying on: not our eloquent words or creative illustrations, but the sovereign God who saves. I will point my students to the cross as often as possible, and when I can’t do that, Father, give me grace to remember to beg for their souls.

Please, brothers and sisters in Christ, remember prayer.