The Year Project

I think I’m broken.

Life is sort of like a funnel.  As we go through it we slowly try different things that cross our path.  Each of these events or ideas help to make us into who we eventually turn out to be whenever we take the snapshot of our life at the end.  Most of us may fight the funnel for a while but eventually we accept it and go with the flow.  Some people are lead by the funnel to the point where they go in a completely different direction than most people ever thought possible.  But I’ve come to realize something today: I think my funnel’s broke.

Most of us have heard the statement, “Follow your dreams!” chanted at us for most of our lives.  Some agree with the statement while others see it only as wishful thinkling.  Again the funnel comes into play as we slowly realize whether our dreams are something that is actually attainable or not.  This funnel, although it sometimes makes us go through painful realizations of what we’re not cut out to do, helps us achieve the most we can out of life with what we’re given.  But what if we ignore the funnel?  What if we continue down a path to follow our dreams when it seems like everything around us is telling us we can’t make it?

There’s always someone more talented, more pretty, more _______ than we are.  Regardless of that most of us find our niche and stay there.  The question is, would those people have ever found their niche if they gave up because life told them they weren’t good enough?  Many people give up way to early to find out if they can make it.

I guess the point I’m trying to come to here is that you have to be willing to be happy in whatever you’re doing.  Your pursuits may bring you sorrow sometimes but there has to be that “it” factor that keeps you going.  Sometimes I think I’m completely insane to be doing what I’m doing with my life.  It’s very easy to want to give up.  But I know that the day that this pursuit doesn’t give me hope for a better tomorrow I will walk away and never look back.   Today was one of those days though that made we wonder whether I could make it no matter how hard I try.  It’s days like these I’m reminded of Bryan Cranston.

“Who’s Bryan Cranston”, you say? Bryan Cranston is the leading man on the T.V. show “Breaking Bad” (The best show on Television in my opinion).  Bryan just won his third Emmy for Best actor for the third straight year in a row.  The man is amazing and deserves every bit of credit he’s been given.  But he didn’t always have it easy.  I found this video that he did a while back talking about the film/tv industry.  Towards the end he says that if its what you love you’ve just got to do it.  If you’re the kind of person that keeps going and gives it your all to truly find out if you’re able, then it’s the field for you.  It took Bryan a significant amount of his career before he landed the dad on “Malcom in the Middle”.  Until then he didn’t have any huge roles.

If you have a few minutes then watch the video.  It may inspire you.

I like writing.

In fact I could say that I really feel like I have a talent for the written word.  I’m not the next Stephen King, but I definitely have a knack for it.  But in spite of the fact that I can sit here all day and tell you how much I like writing it doesn’t make doing it any easier.  There are many days where I have to force myself to sit down and write.  I have to force myself to do something I love.  I don’t consider myself lazy, in fact quite the opposite.  But although sometimes writing can come so easy there are just as many (if not more) times that it’s hard to come by.  This also applies to Spanish and acting and singing.

The reward comes from the times when I get up and do it in spite of how I feel in the moment.  I would dare say that character is seeing the big picture when the moment says otherwise.  Character is fighting for the things you believe in.

So here’s a question for you:

What do you need to get perspective on?  What do you love that’s worth fighting yourself for?

Aretha Frankenstein’s: an odd name for a restaurant and an even more odd place to have a small group after church.  It was about 10:30 on a Sunday night and the six of us were going around the table and telling our stories.  We told our stories of who we were and what we had been through to get us where we are today.  There was a tinge of excitement in the air as our waiter, her name Adrienne, came around and filled our glasses for the fourth or fifth time.  Alanis Morrisette’s Jagged Little Pill album came on the radio and the combination of Pancakes and cigarettes filled the air.  Teen wolf played on the T.V. above the bar and our stomachs were filled to the brim with amazing food.  These were good times.

Each one of us at the table was broken.  Not because we all had tragic past experiences and were dysfunctional in some way but because there was something missing from each of our lives.  Some shared of deep pains in their life while others shared of their mediocrity.  Regardless of our story we were broken because all of us realized our need for something more.  We all needed healing in some form.  None of us had the answers, but at least we knew who had them:

Jesus

He was what bound us together, all of us seeing him in a different way from our life experience.  Some saw Him as a friend, others as a leader, and still others as our counselor.  Our common desire was simply to know Him more and serve Him better. The only thing we knew was that this journey would require two things: Love and Patience.

Our group was on the verge of something life-changing that night and we knew it.  We had all been burned by the church in one way or another and we all longed for true relationship and true transparency in our walk of life.   We wanted people we could lay all of our garbage in front of and they would still love us like we were something worth fighting for.  We wanted to love like Jesus loved: unbiased, pure, and holy.  And maybe if we tried really hard to be that for each other we could understand a little more of what grace is all about.  Then we could see God’s holy love begin to change us.

Legitimacy is something that the American Christian church has run away from in modern times.  We are very good at putting on a face while inside we deal with sins, hurts, and scars.  Where do we go for true relationships?  Who can we trust with our problems?  How can we be more like Jesus in our understanding of grace?  How can we forgive a man seven x seventy times and still love them with the same grace we did the first time they failed?  We didn’t have all the answers that night, but we did know this: No matter what happens, love never loses.

I case you haven’t been privy to my personal life, I’m in the show “The Fantasticks” at the local theater here in Chattanooga.  We started rehearsals this week and basically every night between now and when the show opens I will be rehearsing.  The nice thing about rehearsals is that there is always downtime when you’re not in a scene.  Its times like these when I pull out my iPhone and read a few Bible verses.  Tonight I happened upon Luke 10.  There was no reason for me picking this chapter in particular.  I just played Bible book roulette and Luke 10 was the lucky number of the evening.

But I digress.  Luke 10 gives tells of the first Evangelists Jesus sends out to the people.  I’ll just quote it below to save you the time of looking it up:

^“1After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.”

The first twenty-three verses of this chapter are so meaty you could make a sermon series out of them but I want to focus just on the first verse.  I know that I often get tunnel vision in my own life because I view it totally from my own perspective.  Sometimes I can get selfish and start to put my priorities ahead of others.  (Honestly I think we can all say we do this from time to time.)  But Luke makes a very important literary choice in the first verse of this chapter.  For some reason Luke chooses to not give the names of the seventy-two men that Jesus sent out into the world to tell people of the gospel.

I’m sure that these seventy-two people each thought they were pretty special, and honestly they were.  I would love to sit down and hear of their experiences.  I can’t imagine the stories they could tell. They were the first people to go out into the world and spread the good news of Jesus!  They were on the cusp of God’s new plan of salvation for all of creation.  By human standards that’s a pretty high honor.  In fact I would even go as far to say that in today’s church culture they would at least get a Sunday school class named after them.  They’d probably also have a pew, folding table, or Hymnal given in honor of them after their death.  People would talk about them years after they had past on and tell of the wonderful memories that came to mind when they thought of them.

But Luke doesn’t even give us their names.  He just says that they were seventy-two men that went out and did a job.  These men went out and did miraculous things in the name of God yet their names don’t even get mentioned in the Bible.  All we get is what they did for Jesus: To go and work the fields.

In our own lives we sometimes need to take an account of how important we think we really are.  Yes, God created us uniquely and for a purpose, but if God wrote a book about ministry in today’s time would our names be mentioned for what we had done?  I’d guess probably not.  We have to realize that the notoriety and fame is not our reward.  Our reward is seeing the lives that are changed by our actions for Christ.  But don’t forget that although these men’s names were not given, they still did great things for God.  Sometimes it is the things we do in secret that God cares the most about.

So don’t weigh your walk with God by how successful you are in the eyes of the world.  God counts success on a different scale than man.  I’m sure God was very proud of those 72 nameless men.  We might forget their names, but God hasn’t forgotten a single one.

You like the title?  I thought that would help my search engine traffic.  No seriously, this post has Jesus and Sarah Palin wrapped together in 250 words or less. I know, I’m amazing like that. : )

I was sitting in my local big-box book seller minding my own business when I overheard something.  A young employee held up a Dungeons and Dragons book with an ugly monster on the front and proclaimed to a friend, “Look, it’s Sarah Palin!”.

Sarah Palin opinions aside, the guy obviously was joking but it gave me an idea.  We all create mental images to remind us of people we know.  Sometimes they’re memories, sometimes they’re snapshots of life.  So here’s my question:

When you think of God, what is your mental image?

My snapshot of God has always been of an old friend.  Someone who has been through it all with me.  Yet in spite of everything he knows about me there is still a smile on his face when I talk to him.  Sometimes in my humanity I worry that since he knows all my failures he will want nothing to do with me and yet he is still there loving me just the same.  I wonder what it will be like when we finally see Him in Heaven and the imperfect ideas we have created finally observe a perfect God?

Please tell me,

What does God look like to you?