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Today was one of those perfectly beautiful days. It was one of those days that I wish I had hammock so I could just lay out in the sun and sway back in forth gently rocking in that heavenly breeze. I didn’t have to work this morning so I slept in and missed most all of the day before I had to go to work. My plan was to spend a couple hours out on my porch and read in a rocking chair. I was only able to get out there for about thirty minutes, but I loved every minute of it.

I just bought the Case for Christ at half price the other day and I read some of that while I was outside. It’s a really great book and I just got past the introduction, but I was really having a hard time concentrating. I couldn’t help but just sit there and stare out at the endlessly blue sky. I noticed for the first time that we had rose bushes planted out in front of our town home on campus. They haven’t been planted very long so they haven’t really had a chance to grow or bloom since it’s so early in the year. As of right now, they’re really ugly plants. They’re mostly bare and covered in thorns.

From there my mind took off. It just made me think about thorns in the bible. The first time they’re mentioned is relatively early in the bible, in the book of Genesis. Satan has just lead Adam and Eve to fall and God is basically telling each party the consequences of their actions. He gets to Adam and He says,

“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

God tells Adam that because of what he did, life is going to get a lot harder. Mankind will now face the pains of living in a fallen world. He broke that direct relationship man had with God therefore Adam and the generations after him would have to work to rebuild it, but in the end man would never be able to bridge the gap themselves. But above all, God is telling Adam, “You will now know death…” He says man will return to ground from which we came… Because of sin were all bound to death. And all of our lives would be filled with thorns until we returned back to dust.

Then I thought about Jesus’ crucifixion. In the book of Matthew it describes the moments leading up to Christ’s death. Before he is hung on the cross, a group of soldiers dresses him up in a purple robe and twisted together a crown of thorns and forced it onto his head. Purple was a sign of royalty and obviously so is a crown, but the soldiers only intent was to mock him. By this time Jesus had already been scourged, which means he was beaten with a multi-lashed whip with metal and bone attached at the ends. So there stood Jesus covered with a now blood soaked purple robe and a crown of thorns. Bruised and bloody this had to be one of the worst sights a person could see. But then it goes on and Jesus is stripped naked, nailed to a cross and displayed for all the world to see until he finally dies.

This whole thing reminded me of the rose bushes that were planted in front of me. Yes there is the reference to the crown of thorns which made me think of the crucifixion in the first place, but then I saw something bigger. In his death Jesus was a hideous sight. He was literally bare naked beaten ugly, and anyone that claimed to associate with him would face a similar death. At that point Jesus’ disciples only saw the thorns. They could only see the ugliness of the time and they lost hope of the beauty to come. So they all abandoned him. But as the disciples would soon find out, there is more to the story. Jesus did die, but three days later he triumphantly rose from the grave. Whenever he presented himself to the disciples they didn’t recognize him at first. There was something different about the risen Jesus, but eventually they saw him for who he was. They even saw the marks of the nails in his hands and the spear in his side. You could say he still had the marks of the thorns, the scars of death, but there he stood alive as ever.

Here was what I realized. In his life and death Jesus was a lot like the rose bush planted out front of my town house. He was bare and poor, his life wasn’t very attractive. Those that got close to him often felt the prick of the thorns, the pains of life. But in his resurrection something changed; he bloomed and it was beautiful. He conquered death and brought forth life. He was no longer bare and ugly. With his resurrection he became a beautiful rose, the fragrance of which the world will never forget.

There are going to be times when all we can see are the thorns in our lives. There are going to be times of pain and hurting, but we can’t give up hope. Jesus died that we all might live. Though one day our bodies will in fact return to the dust, we have hope that God has given us a new life through His Son, Jesus Christ. I pray that we will all be able to see the beyond the thorns and look to the roses in our lives. It’s just a little while longer until spring, when everything will be in bloom.

Just Sayins All…

Rusty

When I was in high school I took a lot of art classes. Honestly I think that a lot of the reason was that it was pretty much the only way to stay out of choir or band. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed it and think that I learned a lot about myself in all of those art classes, not to mention the fact that I really grew to love my art teacher. I was thinking about that art class and a particular project we were assigned. Everyone who entered into Advanced Art had to keep an art journal. We took a book decorated and designed the cover then we were supposed to turn the pages into mini-art projects. For those who stayed in art beyond that were expected to continue the book throughout their high school career. I still have my book. It’s a decent attempt that got me a decent grade, but in the end I really just wasn’t very motivated about the project as a whole (I was very distracted during high school and I’m pretty sure I missed the whole point of the experience).

So I was having my quiet time today just sitting next a stream that is right outside where I live, and all of a sudden I started thinking about this journal. It has been nearly three years since I worked on that little spray-painted book and it just popped into my head. As I thought about it I realized that it was actually a really great project. We had free range to do whatever we wanted to this book and make it our own. We could pour our heart, our mind, and our soul into it, with complete access to pretty much any kind of art supply you could ever imagine. We had a small opportunity to create something that honestly reflected our “true self,” who we really are. I wish someone would have explained it to me that way whenever I was in high school (I don’t know if it made much difference, but still it might have helped).

After all of that I firmly decided to buy a new book and go to hobby lobby and buy a bunch of materials to make a new journal. How great would it be to have something to pour myself into like that? I mean how good would it feel to be able to look at something I have created that is a true expression of myself? But then again there were a couple of reasons I decided against it. I remember how frustrating it was even when I was excited about it. I would get a great idea for one of the entries, I would spend all week trying to perfect it. But no matter what I did, whatever ended up on the page was never what I wanted it to be and looked very little like what I had in mind.

I wonder if that’s how God feels about us sometimes… He spent so much time perfecting us, creating us in His image, only for us to end up completely different from what He had intended… I can just imagine Him looking at where I mess up saying, “this isn’t anything like what I wanted.” I look around at the world and I just know deep down that mankind was intended to be better than it is. Life was meant to be better than it is. I see loving families destroyed by divorce, I see great friendships lost over poor communication, and I see lives full of potential wasted away all because sin entered the world and somewhere along the line we lost sight of our heavenly Father. It isn’t supposed to be that way.Though you as a reader may not have experienced these particular things in your life, I know that there are pains and struggles in your life. Let me tell you, it was supposed to be better than this. More importantly, it can be better that this.

Because we live in a broken world where there is trouble and pain, our lives can never reach that “as good as it’s gonna get” point. We’re always going to have problems and we’re always going to mess up and make bad desicions in our lives, but despite that there is hope for improvement. Sin truly is an attitude of the heart that says, “I am the lord of my life.” The problem with each of us is that we turn away from God. We refuse to look at God and take what He has to offer us, life and freedom. And it is whenever we go our own way that things go wrong, that we are hurt and move a little further away from how God intended us to be. God’s heart breaks at the fact that each of us hurts and gets lost. This is why He sent His Son. Jesus came and lived as a man to show us the way to God. He came to show the broken world that their Heavenly Father was reaching out to them, that He isn’t a distant being, and that He loves them. This is how we grow closer to God. If we follow Jesus in his teachings and model ourselves after his life, we start growing closer to how God intended us to be. Our sins marred the beautiful creation of God, but Jesus’ blood gives God the opportunity to mold us once again. I love this passage from 2 Corinthians 3:

Whenever, though, they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are—face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.

I don’t know if anyone has told you, so I will. God saw an opportunity in creating you. When He made you, He poured all of His being into who you were to be. He created you as a masterpiece that reflected who He truly is. You were made in the image of God. And maybe now when you look at yourself and your life you don’t see that, but it is true. The world is messed up and we are messed up, but there is always hope. We must simply turn our face back to God’s and welcome Him as our Father. If we allow Him, He will come into our lives and bring us back to where we belong. There will still be troubles and there will still be times when we hurt, but how much better will it be when we can run into the arms of the creator of the universe? Jesus is the only way to our Father. He is life.

I pray that we would all be able to see God’s original intention for our lives and that we would all turn back to Him for life. May all of our faces shine with the brightness of God, that the whole world would see the light of God. Then maybe the world would slowly become the original masterpiece God created it to be.

Just Sayins All…

Rusty

I was sitting out in a park the other day and I was really just overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of God’s creation around me. As I walked past a pond ducks and geese played follow the leader and nervous frogs jumped into the safety of the water. Butterflies danced this way and that way in the breeze. Dragonflies and bees zoomed around as if in a rush to arrive somewhere in a hurry. And as all of this beautiful life was scurrying around me, the thing I was most in awe of was the beauty of the trees and got to thinking.

What if the reason that everything grows is because to the very essence of being alive is reaching for God? When God breathed His life-giving breath into us He marked the beginning of our journey to know Him. Now post-fall-of-man, we strive with all our power to know Him again. Even people that don’t believe God’s real, strive to know Him. Both believers and non-believers alike are trying to fix the brokenness within. At the fall we were all orphaned, separated from our true Father. The only difference is that we as Christians are reaching for our Dad. This is what got me onto the trees.

Trees spend every moment of their lives reaching towards heaven. Their journey begins when they are tiny little seeds, fragile and vulnerable to the world. Full of potential these little seeds float on the mercy of the wind till they find a place full of nutrients to begin the next step of their journey. Then in complete faith they plant their little roots into the rock of the earth. And there they stay for the rest of their lives, reaching upwards. Come torrents and floods, fires and droughts, they lovingly reach towards the Most High. They never second-guess. They never hesitate. They simply do what trees do and grow. Some have grown twisted because of the entanglements around them, some stoop low to the ground from generations of ambitious climbers, some have been scared by forceful wind, and some lean to the side because of shallow roots, some stand tall, straight, and wide as rivers, and others sway in the breeze tender and fragile. Whatever their shape, they all grow towards the most brilliant source of light.

We share so much in common with these trees. We start out so small in everyway that you can be small. We don’t know where it will take us, but in faith we plant ourselves in God’s love. And there we are and must grow. Just like the trees we will all have our unique shape due to our wide variety of experiences. And regardless of what the tree next to us looks like, all we can do is reach lovingly upwards to our Father, our source of truth and light.

So I say to you, Reach, grow and live in Him. May we have the patience and endurance of the trees. May we have the strength to stay rooted in His love. That is my prayer.

Just Sayins All…

Rusty

A couple of nights ago I was hanging out with my roommate and we went and saw the most amazing movie that I’ve ever seen. It’s called Once. It is the story of two people with one passion and how their love for music brings them together in this mess called life. Many who see it, might be let down. There are no mind blowing actions scenes and no riske “love” scenes. It is a simple story of two simple people and an extraordinary love. Some will say that it’s too slow or too simple, but personally I find that to be apart of its beauty. And it was in this most real film that I found a piece of heaven…

Today at work I was watching the show Man Vs. Wild on the discovery channel. It’s a show where this guy Bear Grylls puts himself out in the middle of nowhere and shows you how to survive and get to safety. It’s such a great idea for a show (and cool idea theologically too…). In the episode I saw today he finds himself in the middle of the jungle in South America and things aren’t going so well. He can’t get a fire started because of the rain, he’s starving and drenched. Then after a sleepless night he’s fighting his way through the forest and something catches his attention. The camera then focuses in on a single violet flower in the mass of green of the canopy. Then Bear stops and says,

“Nobody’s ever going to see that flower. That’s God’s extravagance. Even though no-one’s ever going to see it, he just can’t help but create something beautiful.”

I was absolutely amazed at this truth. (For an interesting interview with Bear Grylls check out this site. He’s got some great things to say.) Now think about this for a moment. We are so loved by God that He creates beauty in this world even though we might never see it. God isn’t hiding these masterpieces away so that we won’t see them, but too often we don’t see them because we’re not really looking. He has created so much beauty that it’s simply kept all over the place. The northern lights and rocky mountains, the oceans and the deserts, the warmth of a thousands sunsets and the melodies of a choir of songbirds… All created for our pure enjoyment and appreciation, but there is so much more out there than wonderful scenery. God’s beauty is really all over the place… in everything.

Now I’m a huge Donald Miller fan. I’ve read all four of his books and strongly recommend them. There’s an awesome scene in To Own A Dragon where Miller is with his mentor who’s a part time landscape photographer. They’re on the side of a mountain waiting for a good shot and one never presents itself, so John, Miller’s mentor, decides to go back after hiking a couple of hours up there. When Miller hesitates to leave and argues they should take the time to appreciate God’s creation, John replies, “You know, I do this all the time. I really love God and all, but why don’t we head back home. God made my family, too.” Again an amazing and simple truth.

I guess my point is that it’s easy to stop and appreciate a beautiful sunset, and it’s right to do so, but there are a lot of blessings out there that are worth appreciating outside of nature. In the rare occasion that I get to go out to my grandparent’s house, I always delight in staring directly up at the billions of stars only seen in the countryside. Yet, when in the daily grind, I’m always quick to ignore the beauty around me. I think that’s why I found Once to be such a brilliant film. There’s so much beauty in the simple things that they do. That same beauty is surrounding us everywhere in everything, yet we tend to ignore so much of it. God really did create our families as well as mountain ranges. How often do we stop and look longingly in appreciation of our families as we do sunsets?

I have so much to be thankful for, and I don’t even realize most of it. I hope that we can all realize these blessings in our lives. And maybe with the realization of these things, we’ll be more inclined to share what we’ve been given.

Just Sayins All…

Rusty

The very first thing we learn about God in the bible is that He is a creator.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1

A few chapters later God takes the time to sculpt man from the earth in His own image, and then breathes His breath of life into man’s body. We were made in the image of the living God. That has got to mean something. I think it mens we have certain specific traits inbred in us from God. Steven James in his book Story describes being made in the likeness of God as “being passionate about peace and quick to laugh and full of wonder and imagination and love and longing and life.” We live because God gave us life. We have passions because God has passions. We love because God is love. I am amazed at how easily we as Christians are distracted. We get narrowly focused on our image , we get caught up on the works we’re doing for God, and we forget what it’s all really about.

I was talking to a good friend and mentor of mine about all of this and he said one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard. He said Christianity is just about living life and knowing why. Imagine how amazing our lives would be if we stopped worrying about looking good, working our way to heaven, converting the world and just started living our lives “being passionate about peace and quick to laugh and full of wonder and imagination and love and longing and life.” I think that there is a certain satisfaction that comes will cultivating theses traits and letting them mature within us because in essence we’re cultivating God in us. And I think that THAT is what the Christian life is about: cultivating God in our lives and sharing what He did through Jesus for the world with the world.

Today I bring this up because I feel a great deal of satisfaction in creating this website. This is my first post of what I hope to be many many more. My dream is that my perspective on life might give you some insight and guidance to your own life. My prayer is that this site would cultivate and mature God’s traits in both my and your life.

Just Sayins All…

Rusty