Thursday, December 16, 2004

Why only Now?

I wonder why we (as the general population), only seem to feel motivated towards generosity and giving during the Christmas season. As the season approaches you hear more and more about upcoming food drives and food banks and the such. Why don't we do this all year around? Do people only need our help, love, compassion and generosity once a year?

I realize that I have just made a generalization in saying what I have said, but it does often seem that this is true. Or maybe it's just that we only HEAR about it during the Christmas PUSH. I know a lot of things happen behind the scenes all year around, but I think we should hear about that too, and be motivated to be involved all year around, not just at Christmas time. Life doesn't get easier just because the seasons change.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

New Name

I don't know how many people would notice, but I changed the name of my blog to reflect the state of life I am in. It is missing the accents, but it is a Hebrew word and part of the definition is right underneath. I am in a waiting phase.

As I have been reading and doing a tad of studying about waiting, I have come to conclude that waiting has many different looks. Sometimes waiting is being quiet, sitting by yourself in a room away from all distractions and waiting to hear God's voice. Other times I believe that it is a time of preparation. Look at the parable of the virgins in Luke. They were waiting for the bridegroom to appear and some were preparing for his arrival and others "checked out" and took a nap.

As I spoke with a friend today, we were speaking of times of transition and both felt like right now (where we are), is a time of transition for many people, most definitely for me. In this time God is positioning his people for what he has in store. We however, have a choice: we can prepare ourselves for whatever we've been positioned for(even if we don't know what that is), or we can sit back and check out. I think I will wait and prepare.

Saturday, November 27, 2004

Cidade de Deus

City of God, an infamous favela of Rio de Janiero, a slum city. I watched the movie City of God last night and it was so disturbing! The movie is based on a true story that spanned the late 60's, 70's and early 80's. It was everything that you can imagine what living in hell would be like. Death, killing, drugs, poverty, fear, rape, war... The most upsetting thing about it was that it was a war of youth and children. Kids had guns and killed each other. Young men thought honour and prestige were associated with their first kill. Aaaahhhhh!! I read an article on the movie last night too and a journalist said this about the movie and real life situation:

Foreign audiences may well have found City of God’s violence stomach-churning, particularly that involving very young children, but the reality today, 30 years after the film was set, is far worse. Drug gangs are now better organised and armed, and child recruitment is more common. Nearly 3,000 people are shot dead each year in Rio, where 11,000 young men are thought to be involved in armed drug gangs. About half of these are estimated to be under 18 and handle weaponry such as assault rifles, ground-to-air rocket-launchers and grenades.

I don't even know what else to say about it, except that it made me cry out to God for a group of people in a place that seems so devoid of God. God is there, they just can't see him. Jesus reveal yourself in Cidade de Deus.

Friday, November 26, 2004

wogging, jogging and running

Well I have started running again. It's been a while. To be absolutely realistic, you would call my "running", jogging.

I am quite proud of myself, I have ran 3 times so far this week. The first run felt sketchy, the second not too bad and the last one I joined a friend and I felt like an out of shape geek.

We arranged to meet to go for our run, and I did forwarn him that it would be more like a jog so he would not have any crazy running expectations of me. When we were chatting and stretching before we ran, he non-chalantly commented on a past marathon he'd run. Actually, it was 2 marathons he'd run in the past. Well for me, a returnee to running after a long remission, I was hesitant to run with him. What if I embarrassed myself by my lack of endurance? What if my jog is more like a waste of time to him? Aaahhhh the fun and joys of comparison. He's more fit, his legs are longer....blah, blah, blah. It was really about the company. The run was a bonus to me. Running is way more fun when you have someone to talk to and keep your mind off how painful it is to get back into shape.

My advice...if you are just getting back into running, go with someone who is more fit than you. If they still want to run with you after a lame jog, they enjoy your company. PLUS...they can talk the whole time and all you have to do is listen. Maybe ask a few questions to keep them chatting. Funny thing was that at the beginning of the run, he kept asking me questions and I was having a hard time answering in between breaths. Oh...so funny!

Give me another month of consistent running and I might just like running again. And to my running pal, I hope you enjoyed your wog!

"Marathoning is just another form of insanity"-- 1952 Boston Marathon winner John J. Kelley

Saturday, November 20, 2004

Busy and Rushed...and sometimes tired

It's funny that when I am not busy and don't have a million things on my agenda, I wish to be busy. Who in the world wants to be busy?! Today I was busy and rushed, and I can't tell you how many times I uttered profanity. I was impatient as I drove, impatient as plowed my way through Ikea and I have to say, that I don't like the person I become when I am busy and rushed. Is that why the world is full of a bunch of jerks like I was today? Because everyone is busy and rushed? We really do need to learn to slow down, relax and learn how to wait well, learn how to deal with things out of our own control and just breathe. Maybe we should take siestas in the middle of the day too, then tired wouldn't have to be added to busy and rushed.
Despite myself, today ended well.

Monday, November 15, 2004

Shut Down

do you ever feel like every direction you turn you get shut down? I am beginning to know the feeling. I stand here before God saying over and over that I am available and I pick something up and it gets taken away. I get shut down. It's frustrating, but at the same time I can see that God is teaching me things...(I hope i'm not too daft to get it all!). I have realized that my pride is hurt everytime I don't get to do something and then I think, if I wasn't prideful, my pride couldn't be hurt. God please deal with my pride.

As well...I'm just not good at waiting. It's hard to wait when you feel like you should be doing something. Even harder when you think that the people around you think you should be doing something. I could very easily do lots of things, but I know I would be doing them simply to distract myself from waiting before God and letting him work out things in me and teach me.

My friend Corey said just last night (as we had a planning meeting), that I needed to be protected! I was a bit surprised by her saying that and asked what I needed to be protected from. As she went on to explain, I completely agreed with her. She said I would do everything that came my way and do an good job at it all, but basically in the end, it would keep me from what I was meant to do. I just wish I knew what I was meant to do, because at this point as things keep getting taken away from me, I'm feeling that must not be capable of anything. oh the lies! It gets so tiresome to keep combatting the lies, but so essential. I know God has a destiny for me and I can feel it in me, wanting to burst out and BE!! At the same time, I know the NOW part is to wait and let God unfold and reveal the beauty and exciting things he's planned for me to do. Ah the joy and frustration of working it all out. When do I get to be me?...whoever that is.

Monday, November 08, 2004

No Brainer

I feel like whenever I write here I am supposed to be profound. Well...I say to the trash with that idea! So this entry is a no brainer. I simply haven't posted for a while and wanted to. I did discover a recent comment from the last user of this blog site...sherrysherry.blogpot.com. Funny thing is I never imagined that someone else would come up with the same creative and unique name that I would. Maybe I will have some fun random readers as a result.

Aaaaah. Did I tell you that I shared the message at church a week ago? I did. And once I was finished I was happy to be done, having shared what the Creator put on my heart to share. The scary thing is now I feel like there is more he wants me to say and teach. Eeek! I will get over my nervousness. My sermon or talk, whatever you want to call it, was about Comparison and how when we do compare ourselves to others...we end up with an ungodly perspective of self and others. I think my last blog ranted about this a bit. Anyhow, what was funny was a lot of my nervousness came from comparing myself to others who I think are better speakers than me. As well fearing that everyone who was listening would compare me to the other speakers and come to the same conclusion that I had come to...that they were better and I was worse. God please help me.

I spoke with my Dad on the phone recently(it was his 53rd Birthday) and he gave me a run down on obedience. Now I think I want to study obedience. I also want to study about heaven. My curiousity about heaven is big. I don't know when it started, but I know that when I read this novel by a guy named Randy Alcorn, he described Heaven in a way I had never thought of and it made sense. So now...Heaven is on the study list.

I've been thinking about the early disciples and how at the beginning of the church in Acts, they were all basically together. Then the Holy Spirit came and they had a teacher, counsellor, etc. They were equipped and all that and then totally dispersed. For some reason I keep thinking that me and all the people here in my community are in a time of equipping and a time of dispersal is coming. I wonder where I will be...the Morley Reserve? Sometimes I really want to be there and spend more and more time in the community. Maybe have a home there that is a safe place for people to come and hang out and be loved and built up and have fun. But after thinking about all the crap that goes on...I mean I know, I grew up on a reserve and at one point of my life made a vow that I would never live on a reserve again. I had to take that back and say to God I would go anywhere, even back to the reserve again. Don't get me wrong, it's not as bad as this is making it sound at the moment, but it's stuck and it's messy and political. Sometimes it's better to be in the mess than to walk away and pretend it doesn't exist though.

Okay to totally change the subject once again, I think I would like to learn french. I don't think it will be too too difficult since I did take french for 5 years in school. Hopefully it won't be too hard, because I also want to learn Spanish, Portuguese, Halq'mey:lem and Stoney. Yeah. They say that learning another language helps improve your memory.


Monday, October 25, 2004

Thoughts on some stuff

I was reading a friend's blog and he made a comment that ran along a familiar vein of thinking among a number of people I have been talking to. It had to do with those we would view as being the "spiritually elite" in the church today and feeling as if church was really geared for them as opposed to the rest of the normal church population. I think this is a train of thought that the enemy must take great pleasure in perpetuating and making some people feel like crap and others like they are ahead of the game.

I was thinking about what was said about the church being geared for the so-called spiritually elite and I wonder is it really? Or is it our own funny perceptions that tell us that? I have felt the same way on and off, but found that the times when I feel as you do now, that it is because I am at that moment comparing myself, my "spirituality" to others and I think that I am lacking and I think that others think I am lacking and the end results in me feeling left out in some way. I think it has something to do with our own definitions of the word spiritual as well. We, as the church have at times resorted to the definition of 'spiritual' as being active in some sort of publicly seen spiritual giftedness. This opposed to seeing that since we are created as both physical and SPIRITUAL beings, that our entire life, every moment of everyday is spiritual because we are spiritual. But we often go by what we can see, what we define as "evidence" that we are in fact spiritual...does so and so hear God? do they dream dreams, see visions, speak in tongues, manifest God in some way?? We have given higher value to things in comparison to others. The work of the enemy to cause dissent and strife among God's people. Compare yourselves to one another and find yourself to be better than some and not the equal of others. Neither of these a Godly perspective of self. Nor Godly perspective of others. These are the things I have been thinking about lately. That's enough of my rant. Love to hear back from you on this.

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Standing here until you make me move

It's a saturday morning and yet again, for the 6th morning that I have woken up since coming back from Europe, I wonder what my life is going to be.

I was talking with a friend about what Pete said at the 24-7 conference I was at, about not making any major life decisions for at least 3 weeks after coming home. Why? because you'd be overwhelmed spiritually and emotionally from the trip. We all laughed, but now that I am home, I am laughing and I am wondering. I wonder how crazy would it be to make some decisions now! I mean, I feel like I would be more willing to do ANYTHING God wanted me to do. I feel open and vulnerable. I feel flexible, movable and raring to GO. It would be pretty crazy to just jump up and say, "HEY! I 've decided to move to Portugal, learn Portuguese and do 24-7 stuff there!". At the same time if God really wanted me to do that I would, no matter how much it would freak the heck outta me, because I would be leaving all that is familiar to me.

Right now when I think about it though, I think it is the comfortable and familiar things that keep us rooted to one spot a lot of the time. Of course fear of the unknown and what it holds roots us to the spot too. We want to be secure and that too keeps us in one spot, because when you start moving into the unknown, you don't know that it holds security (according to the world's definition). Right now I don't feel so rooted. I feel that I would be okay right now with selling all my stuff and moving to somewhere and learning a new language. I am young and single and I don't have a house or a family or a dog...why not go now?!?

I was talking with a friend of mine about people in the ancient past and how they were definitely more nomadic than we and we also talked about how the Great Commission had the great statement..." GO...". Maybe being a nomadic, gypsy, 24-7 missionary is what's in store for me. I don't know. Who knows. Thank goodness God knows and I will stand here until he makes me move.