Life is More Than I Can Handle, But God Gave Me That

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080913110657AAEB7sh


I want to talk about something that many better writers have tackled in the past but that I feel the need to discuss none the less. I am a big supporter of knowing what the Bible says; if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you can’t keep his commands if you don’t know what they are. A big part of that is understanding the context as well as content, in other words knowing what it meant to the original audience given the circumstances of the time. While I am not the greatest student of God’s Word, I hold it in the highest regard because it is one of the major ways we can learn who God is.

Keeping this in mind, one of my pet peeves is the misuse, misquotation, and misinterpretation of Scripture. This can lead to misunderstanding who God is and what He wants for us and from us, which makes life harder, and life is hard enough when you know Scripture.

There are plenty of misquotes floating around to choose from; one of my favorites is ‘Money is the root of all evil’. The actual quote is ‘For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.’ (1^st Timothy 6:10, New International Version). The actual quote does not blame problems on money but a lust for it. I have heard this misquote used to justify not paying for stuff.

That example, however, is not the reason I chose to write this piece. I am writing because of a little gem that keeps showing up and while well meaning gives a false impression of reality. That phrase is ‘God will never give you more than you can handle’.

I have two major beefs with this statement: 1. People think it’s in the Bible and it isn’t. 2. It’s not really true.

The statement ‘God will never give you more than you can handle’ is never found in the Bible. At all. The verse that people often attribute this idea to is 1^st Corinthians 10:13, which states ‘No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.’(New International Version)

I would like to say that I can understand why people would get this meaning from the verse, but I really can’t. I think it’s just bad interpretation of Scripture, as evidenced in the link I attached. To come to this conclusion about the meaning of 1^st Corinthians 10:13 is to completely ignore the context of the verse in relation to the chapter. In the New International Version, chapter 10 has the heading ‘Warnings From Israel’s History’. It is a statement that the people of Corinth have as a little of excuse to sin as the Israelites who sinned against God even though He was in their midst. It is a statement that there is hope to escape from sin and that God has given us the ability to resist temptation. It is confrontation and affirmation, and it is not soft and fluffy.

Now to get to my big issue. If the statement ‘God will never give you more than you can handle’ is true, then how come I sometimes want to curl up in a ball on the floor and sing ‘Jesus Take the Wheel’ in an unironic fashion?

The reality is I can’t really endure a lot on my own; my strength comes from God. I think that believing that God will never give me more than I can handle blinds me to how much I really need God. It gives me a false view of how dependent on God I am and of my own strength. When something comes along that I don’t feel I can handle, should I be angry at God for allowing it to happen? Should I then conclude that God is not good? From there we can go in all sorts of negative directions.

So why am I writing this, to attack people who like that saying? Yes, a thousand times yes. No, I am not. I am writing this because I want God’s truth to be known and His Word to be understood for what it says and means. I am writing this because I want to encourage you to cling to what God promises, not something that sounds nice but will let you down, so that you will know that if you seek God will all your heart you will find Him (Jeremiah 29:13) and that He is with you in your pain.

Legos: How Far Should We Go Down the Plastic Brick Road?

In the third season of the sitcom ‘Community’, the audience is introduced to Dr. Marshall Kane, a professor who earned his degrees in prison over the course of several years. He was only allowed one hour a day to study, and while I do not remember the exact count, it took him thousands of hours to get his education.

At one point early in the season, he asks his biology class a very important question: What happened to Legos? When he went in to prison, Legos were simple; now they are extremely complex, with elaborate sets based on films, TV, and comics. (My apologies for not having the clip of this. I couldn’t find it on the internet. Doesn’t mean it isn’t there, but I couldn’t find it.)

And so this gets me thinking about where the future of Legos is headed. So the following is a list of things that will never (or at least should never) get their own Lego sets.

-Saw

-50 Shades of Grey

-Downton Abbey

-Schindler’s List

-Taken

-A Walk to Remember

-Gran Torrino

-Saving Private Ryan

-The Watchmen

-Game of Thrones

-No Country for Old Men

-Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous

-Full House

-Crime and Punishment

-Undercover Brother

-The 1998 Dodge Grand Caravan Owner’s Manual

-The Woodsman

-Black Swan

Well that’s what I’ve got, and there are so many other things that do not deserve Legos. What are some that you can think of?

Writing About Writing

This is the first post I have written in a little over two months. Not only is it the first post to this blog in that time, but the first thing I have written at all, for anything. And to be honest, I’m not sure why.

The old adage is that practice makes perfect, that you can’t get any better at something if you don’t regularly do it. I would like to be a good writer, and I believe that God has given me the ability to communicate truth in a variety of ways. So naturally, I should be trying to exercise that gift as much as possible, in order to improve and make use of what I have been given.

Yet here we are on September the 15^th. (I guess that means this piece is now dated). I can point a finger at being busy with work, which is true, but that doesn’t explain all the time I’ve had to watch DVDs and not get my apartment in order. Oh by the way, the house I lived in got sold and I moved in to an apartment 4.5 miles away from the old place. So that’s something, too, but still.

I don’t really know if there really is a point to this piece or not. I think I enjoy communicating, whether it’s a deep truth or just making somebody laugh. But I often lack the discipline to put my words down, something I should do before I completely forget them. So I am going to try to do better. This concludes this post. Seacrest out.

God, the Gutter, and Naked Rodents

I work overnights and when I came home Wednesday morning, I parked in the front of the house because I wanted to be in the shade. Well that was a pipedream, but I was too lazy to go park behind the house. Anywho, as I was leaving to go my friend Tim’s house for the 4^th, I saw what I can only guess was a baby squirrel in the gutter in front of passenger side front tire.

When I say a baby squirrel, I mean a ‘baby’. This thing had no hair , and it’s eyes weren’t fully developed and it was all gross. I couldn’t find a nest anywhere, so I have no idea where it came from and how long it had been crawling through the gutter. There was a pebble stuck in the skin on the back of its head, and I did not want to risk pulling it out.

Not really knowing what I could do for it, I grabbed a napkin from the car and picked it up from the gutter. As many of us know, the more fragile something is, the harder it is to pick it up without breaking it. The squirrel did not want to be picked up; it kept trying to crawl out of my hands, and I didn’t want to hold it too tightly for fear of doing more damage. In the end, I placed it under a plant growing in the yard so at least it would be in the shade. The squirrel immediately began to crawl away from where I had placed it.

I was struck by how similar this is to life, because we are all like that squirrel. We are vulnerable, gross, and really don’t know what’s best for us. We spend so much time blindly crawling around, trying to find a safe place, all the while trying to keep hidden the things we are ashamed of. We hate the situations we are in but can’t seem to change them, and so we blunder forward into who knows what, doing the same things we were doing before.

God sees us as we are, where we have been, where we are going, and where we can go if we go with him. He did not simply turn his back on us when he ejected us from the Garden of Eden, but stayed alongside us and is continually making a way for us to be with him.

But we fight and scrape and move in the opposite direction, not accepting God’s grace. We confuse obedience for slavery, and the chains of sin for freedom. And God goes nowhere, waiting patiently, but not forcing his will upon us.

I don’t know what happened to that squirrel; I looked for it after I got home, and again the next morning without finding it. I don’t know if it would have been more merciful to just kill it. But I do know that I tried to help it and it didn’t want my help, that I was trying to something good and it couldn’t tell because it was just a hairless baby rodent. It had an excuse to fight against compassion, and in that way I envy him.

Living in the Twin Cities

Here are a few things that I have seen or experienced since I moved from Alexandria to Minneapolis.

-A man drinking from a paper bag while walking down the sidewalk.

-Somebody getting arrested in the parking lot of the Brookdale branch of the Hennepin County Library.

-Somebody getting arrested on the side of Highway 100 North late at night on the 4^th of July, forcing me to do some fancy driving to not miss the exit.

-A man walking in to a Holiday gas station dressed as a sultan. I would have taken a picture, but I didn’t want to offend him in case he was a genie. He might have been a nice genie, like Robin Williams in ‘Aladdin’, but would probably be like the evil genie from the ‘Wishmaster’ movies.

-An entire family gathered in the men’s bathroom at Target while a baby’s diaper is being changed. Try doing your business with a couple little kids running around outside the stall.

-Going to the movies in a discount theater that gives me an idea what going to the movies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland would be like.

This list has a lot of random and odd things that have happened to me since October 2011, but one might notice that I didn’t mention anything about God. Two reasons for that-One: I wanted to share some of these weird moments. Two: The moments where God makes himself evident and shows his goodness to me are too numerous to list here, and frankly deserve their own posts and shouldn’t be sandwiched in with some crap about genies and post apocalyptic movie theaters. That, however, will not stop me from mixing these things together.

Becoming Like the Paparazzi

The optometrist or ophthalmologist or whatever it’s called at the Alexandria Wal-Mart is named Dr. Derek Bonaci. I think that’s how you spell his name. Anywho, he’s the eye doctor at Wal-Mart. I see his name and his picture just every time I am there (some weeks it was been almost every day ).

So I get a lot of face time with Dr. Bonaci…’s photograph. So I had this idea that it would be kind of funny some time to go up to him and say ‘Are you Derek Bonaci? The Derek Bonaci?’ And maybe ask him for his autograph, and say how great it was to actually meet him.

And if I felt like lying, I would claim that I had actually done that, that Dr. Bonaci was deeply moved in some profound way, and not just thinking I was some wiseacre up to some tomfoolery. Which it would be, the type of tomfoolery you would expect from some who uses the word ‘tomfoolery’.

But, I wonder what would happen if we started to treat other people like the paparazzi treat celebrities. I do not mean getting into car chases, just to get a ‘casual’ shot. I do not mean going through your neighbors’ garbage, or looking for ‘baby bumps’, or any of that stuff you see in the check out line or on the E! network.

I am talking about making a big deal out of other people. I am talking about giving people your full attention, no matter who they are or what that interchange will get you.

Why? Because each and every person you came into contact with today is someone that God is passionately in love with. Because if Jesus was physically in this room with me right now, I believe that I would have his undivided attention. Because no matter the level of humility or modesty, everybody wants somebody to pay attention to them at some point. Because I believe it is a great way to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
P.S. I don't know if this will show up as a repost. According to the site, this was only a draft and never posted.

More Funny Thoughts That I Forgot Yesterday/Hadn’t Had Yet

-I heard Coldplay on the radio a couple days ago and I decided that they should put out a rap album, because it would be extremely awful and then maybe they wouldn’t play them on the radio 14 times an hour.

-I don’t have a lot of romantic experience with women, but I bet if I were writing a love poem, referring to a woman as ‘the Kanye West of my heart’ would be a bad idea.

-Monkeys probably wouldn’t make good babysitters, but I won’t know for sure unless I have children of my own.

-While Dove chocolates are delicious, they are so obviously designed for women. I know this because of the messages on the inside of the wrappers. I had one last week at work and the message inside said ‘Explore yourself’. It might as well have had ‘girlfriend’ or ‘diva’ on the end of it. I am waiting for one to just say ‘You go girl’.

-The name ‘Kanye’ is now in my computer’s dictionary.

-We know that crooked cops take bribes and work as freelance muscle, but I think a crooked dentist probably just gives out lots of candy at Halloween and other candy appropriate holidays.

-A good way to take up space in a document is a size 14 font, accompanied with dashes at the beginning of the sentence and a space between each statement.

Funny Thoughts to Brighten or Darken Your Day

Here is a collection of random thoughts for you to ponder as you make a better use of your time than I do.

-Whenever I see a discarded shoe on the side of the road, I say a little prayer that there isn’t a foot in that thing.

-If I see the word ‘bronies’ on the Internet, I ignore it and hope that someone misspelled brownies.

-If I could grow a beard, I would have an instant Zach Galifanakis costume.

-When life gives you lemons, thank the Lord that life didn’t give you Brussels sprouts. You can’t make any delicious beverages with Brussels sprouts, whereas lemons afford you multiple options.

-Yesterday I saw a non-fiction library book entitled ‘Medieval Elves’. I was super excited to tell people this, until a second look told me it said ‘Medieval Lives’.

-Often times the only thing that separates man from the apes is a tall fence. Also we’re not apes.

-When someone asks ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’, you should ask if anyone has checked on the farmer recently. If his chickens are running around willy-nilly, maybe it means the farmer died.

-I think a good business idea would be suits of armor for babies.

Fiddle Dee Dee, It’s a Small World After All

Recently I find myself experiencing an interesting phenomenon: It seems as if everybody I know knows everybody else I know. The couple from high school who are friends with the brother of an old college friend. That guy from college who leads youth group with one of my younger brother’s high school friends.

And it’s not just that; I’m coming across people who know people who know people. A friend’s friend’s mother-in-law who knows a random guy I went to college with for a year. Odd little things like that. People who met and found out they both knew me, only to find out they knew a lot more of the same people than they had previously been aware.

This is the kind of thing that would happen to every once in a while, but has been happening a lot more recently. Not because I talk to people like a human being, but because I peep on their random thoughts through Facebook. I have two thoughts on this: One, I wish that I was a bit more of the connecting factor between these people and not just finding these things out randomly; I could use an ego boost right now.

Thought number two: Despite how big our world is, no matter what its population size, or what your background is, we are all connected to one another as human beings. If we take it to a larger perspective, despite the size, population, and diversity of our world, there is one God who fashioned it together and knows all who live upon it.

All these people who I come across that know each other, even though I wouldn’t expect them to, are not just a part of the human family, but a part of God’s family. This family is not bound together by geography, ethnicity, or human bloodlines, but by the blood of Jesus Christ. And if I make no other point in this writing, let it be that we are never alone: Not only is our God with us, but His children are everywhere, willing to cry or laugh with you. It’s true, even when it doesn’t feel that way.

It is a small world after all, held in the hands of a God who does all things well.

Apathetic Like Jesus

As one who attended a Bible college, I encountered a lot of people falling in love and getting married. Some couples were good friends, others merely acquaintances. One year, one such couple got married about halfway through the first semester.

I am not exaggerating when I say that almost everyone one from school went to that wedding (don’t pee your pants with disbelief-it’s a small Bible college). Several faculty members had gone, and every one of the R.A.s went-except for me. I was the only authority on campus that weekend. That in itself is terrifying.

Later on, when talking with a friend about why I had not gone, I expressed that in the most Christ like way possible, I just didn’t care. That phrase would resurface every once in a while in my vocabulary in the following years.

When I would say this about someone or something, I meant nothing vicious or mean-spirited. I wished people the best in a very general way, but if we weren’t friends the subject in question wasn’t that important to me. It just wasn’t.

In the past year or so, I have made a conscious effort to never say that again, for the simple reason that there is no such thing as Christ like apathy. I don’t believe that I will ever be friends with every person, much less good friends. That’s okay, because I don’t have to be.

But I don’t think not giving a crap is alright either. And it is certainly not right to try to tag on godly attributes to an ungodly attitude. If I don’t care about someone or something very much, I need to own that and leave Jesus out of that, because I know he is not apathetic.

Thank you, Jesus, that you do not share the attitude that I sometimes have. If Jesus was ever apathetic, there would not be a life, a ministry, a death, and a resurrection to celebrate, something that is not to be celebrated only this weekend, but in every second that we are given. Jesus, I’m sorry for tagging you onto my lameness; you deserve better.

I don’t necessarily know how to change this, but I know I need to, and that my savior hasn’t given up on me.

The Necessity of Hard Jobs

Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, I have to say two things; 1: To the four people who read this blog, I am sorry that I have taken so long to post. 2: I tried to write a post on this same topic earlier, but it is unfinished due to the fact that some things have realigned in my mind and what I would have published would have been crappy and come across as self-serving. No guarantee that this won’t be but we’ll see.

For the past two months, I have worked overnights in a group home in Maple Grove. It’s run by a non-profit company who has houses all over the city. I have 24 scheduled hours per week, meetings and training is paid time, and I can fill-in at other houses, which I have been doing recently. I have been working second shift when I work at other houses, which adds the challenge of a completely different routine to the challenge of working with individuals that I have just met.

The individuals that I take care of have various physical and mental disabilities, which are accompanied by often severe health problems. Or sometimes health problems cause the disability; it has been almost a month since one of the people at my primary house died of a degenerative disease I’d never heard of before I got the job.

It’s a difficult job: I’m not creating or selling a product; I am providing care for other human beings, which will never be an exact science. Sometimes I have hard time leaving work at work.

I wanted to write about my job because something is happening inside of me because of it. Maybe God is doing something new, or is reworking something that needed to be reworked, but I am seeing people differently than I used to.

You see for the longest time I have been incredibly uncomfortable with the handicapped, hospitals, nursing homes, etc., basically any place where people were in a different situation than myself. It’s not that I didn’t care about them, but I didn’t really want to be around them, which would make you question my intentions and heart, and that is perfectly fine with me.

Now I haven’t necessarily stopped being uncomfortable. Straight up honesty: I bathed an 84 year old woman this weekend, an activity that I wouldn’t have chosen had I been free to do so. I was incredibly uncomfortable, but early on in the job, I made a choice that I was going to do what was needed in order to properly care for someone, whether or not it was gross. It’s not about my comfort, but theirs.

Quite frankly, I really don’t want to be comfortable in my job. If I get comfortable with disease and death, with defect and deformity, if I get comfortable with the way things are, then I believe I will forget that our world is not the way that God wanted it to be. God does not want us to suffer, He does not want us to die; if I get comfortable, I fear that I will forget that.

Every time I go in to work, there is a reminder that our world is broken. The more I interact with people who are obviously vulnerable and dependent, the harder it gets to deny my own brokenness.

And in response to this, I choose to love. I choose to see someone who is just as needy as I whom I can lend a hand to. I choose to do gross things, the kind of things Jesus would do if he were in my place.

Hard jobs are a necessity because life is hard, but I think they also exist to soften us, to help us see ourselves for who we really are, and to remind us that when God says His creation is good, He means it.

Valentine Stew

So I have a few thoughts to share on Valentine’s Day. Nothing too revolutionary or anything like that; I just have some intellectual odds and ends about February 14^th.

-Knowing that Valentine’s Day is overrated does not make me feel me any better about being single on Valentine’s Day. Those in relationships who are not making a fuss at least have the option of not fussing together.

-If you are interested in someone and they do not share those feelings, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you, or with them. It just means they are not interested.

-I want to make Christian themed Valentine cards. I learned last week that there are candy hearts with messages like ‘Jesus luvs u’ and such. They’re sort of like Testamints, in that you can share parts of the Gospel without ever actually having to talk to people. My cards would say things like

‘Jesus- He’ll never break your heart for no good reason’.

-My favorite part of Valentine’s Day is the reduced price candy in the following days.

Well those are my thoughts. Happy something or other.

Texting: The Saga Continues

So I have complained about texting and instant messaging before; I think my complaints were valid and we’re not going to go through those again (I also would have to look them up because I forgot what they were).

So instead, I have come up with some texting acronyms of my own. You know what I am talking about, like lol (laugh out loud) or rofl (roll on floor laughing). I will list an acronym and its meaning, because I am such a nice guy. And away we go.


LML: Lose my lunch

DIMU: Dancing in my underwear

TOT: Texting on toilet

STPTB: Skills to pay the bills

SWAG: Swag!

AYSTAFG: Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

IIRTAIRPBRCCCCBCPARCCWOA: If I really think about it, regular Pepsi beats regular Coca Cola, Cherry Coke beats Cherry Pepsi, and R.C. Cola wins over all.

Well, there it is. I give you permission to use those while you are texting or using instant messaging…providing you give me $.35 each time you use one.

A Long Overdue Blog Entry

So yeah I haven’t written anything bloglike in awhile, so it might suck but here we go.

It is the New Year already. I have only had to write the date on something once that I know of, but it felt weird to do so. Like maybe I had gone to sleep for too long and had missed something, you know, like several months of my life.

And in some ways that’s what the last few months has felt like. I quit my job, moved out of my parents house to a house in Minneapolis, and became a part of a new church family, all of those happening in a very short amount of time.

The reason this seems so strange and dreamlike is that it is just so different from the way I do things. Sometimes I do make snap decisions, but it is usually never over anything really big or long term.

But here I am, in north Minneapolis, next to Brooklyn Center, about 8 or so miles from Knollwood Christian Church, where I attend church and help with youth group and participate in a young adult Bible study. I have worked as a temp at four different places where I have recycled television glass, sorted car engine parts, made paving bricks out of old tires, and taken apart TV’s. And all of it is very real.

Some of it has been wonderful and full of amazing blessings, other times I have felt lonelier than I had in years. But, ultimately, it has been the right decision. God paved the way for me to be here, and He knows why He wants me here, and I think that has to be good enough.

My advice for the New Year is to enjoy it. If last year was not a good one, take comfort that our God was good. If last year was the best year of life so far, thank God for the reasons why it was and don’t assume He can’t or won’t top 2011.

On a slightly different note, there is a man at my current work site who looks like an Asian Barrack Obama. God Bless 2012.