The Weight of Substance

When we say that something has no substance, we are saying that it isn't worth anything real.  It has no weight or meaning.  Substance means you can hold it in your hand; you can have it and it's yours; it's something that lasts.  Something that has no substance cannot be redeemed because it's only purpose is to be stripped away.

Athanasius, one of the early Church fathers, wrote that mankind is constantly worshipping the "pleasures of the moment," which are merely an illusion.  An illusion is something that one believes to be real yet is not.  There are plenty of times in my life when I chase something down, only to find that it had no substance at all; that it was merely an illusion.

I've found that it's easy to believe in the substance of illusions.  Believing in something that isn't there is easy because things without substance aren't heavy.  Sometimes, even when I know the illusion isn't real, it's easier to just go on believing it.  But when that illusion is stripped away, you're left with nothing.

What if instead we chose to chase down weighty things?  What if we believed in difficulty and opposition?  Lifting weights only works because you're lifting weight.  Tricking yourself into getting in shape has never worked for anyone.  When you're holding something of substance, you can have it and it's yours.  Maybe it's not yet completed; maybe it's not even good yet, but at least it's real.

Illusions don't make you, weight does.      

A Word on Hope

You are in the middle now.  You are where the conflict is.  This is not an easy time; it's a time that is designed to rip away what you do not need.  But remember that conflict is written into a story in order that resolution would come.  This is hope.

Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthian church that our earthly house is being destroyed and a new house is being made for us in the heavens.  We are constantly being given over to death so that life can be seen in the stories we live out.  The more we are crushed, the more provision from God we receive.  Christians are most faithful in death because it pushes us toward the reality of what we hope for.

This is why Jesus told His followers to pray for the ones who crush, and love those who destroy.  In their attempts to harm, they only end up bringing more life.  Jesus proved this in the most literal way possible.

If you are in the middle, know that it is designed to bring you closer to where God is.  You will find that clinging to what God is taking away only brings more pain.  Hope suggests that running forward despite the blindness of unknowing will lead you to the home God has had for you all along.

(2nd Corinthians 4:7 - 5:10)

A Matter of Life and Death

Imagine for a moment a duck.  Continue imagining the duck.  Now, stop imagining the duck.  Is it gone?  Good.  This is not a story.

Imagine a new duck, and for the sake of clarity, let's call him Ferdinand.

Imagine that he looks kind of
like this, only bigger.  And more real.

Once, Ferdinand was by a pond.  After seeing some of his duck brethren fly by, he decides to join them.  They fly to a lake and Ferdinand finds a new place to hang out.  This is a story.

A while ago I mentioned Aristotle coming up with the idea of a story as a beginning, a middle with conflict, and an end.  Now you can see why the first section of this blog was not a story.  There was no conflict.  There was a beginning and an end; arguably, even a middle.  But a duck is a duck is a duck.

Ferdinand tells a story, albeit a fairly uninteresting one.  The difference is that Ferdinand did something.  There was a conflict because Ferdinand was not where he wanted to be and he had to give something up to get there.  He flew.  He moved.

The etymology of the word conflict shows us that it came from the meaning "to strike together."  Conflict. When two forces strike together, they lose a part of themselves.  Just look at swords that clash together.  They come out all chinked and janky.  That's death.  When you're in the middle of a story, you're going to experience some sort of death.  A part of who you are is going to have to be given up to reach a resolution. 

There's conflict in every story because there must be.  Otherwise, nothing happens.  There is no narrative without struggle.  From the conflict however arises resolution.  Resolution means to settle, or to come to rest.  With rest comes new life.  Every story is a matter of life and death.

In a letter that a guy named Paul wrote to a church in a city called Ephesus, there's a line that says Christ put hostility to death through the cross.  The hostility that Paul is talking about here is between the Jewish folk and the non-Jewish folk.  Paul says that because Christ died, those two groups have a new life together.  Christ's death brings a new life of peace between communities.

You have the power to make new life where there is none.  The way this works is by you dying.  Not physically, maybe, but in the stories we live out everyday, resolution of conflict comes when a force dies.  If you want to live well, die better.  Maybe you think dying means the end of things.  Think again.

Community and Store Bought Shiny Stuff

The great thing about rocks is that they are all over the place.  This makes having a rock collection fairly easy, but rock collecting professionals know that in order to have a good rock collection, you need some shiny stuff.  Shiny rocks are not found on the side of the road unfortunately.  The are found in caves and quarries and other dangerous places.  They're also found in souvenir shops in Arizona.

The shiny stuff in my rock collection mostly came from a cart shaped like a covered wagon from various stores in semi-exotic locales.  However, these shiny rocks made me feel pretty good; they made me feel like a true blue collector.  Since you can't really feel any pride from store bought shiny stuff, I always bought more.  In fact, rocks were one of my favorite things to buy.  In the end though, while these rocks look good in your rock box, they aren't really yours.

This can not be found in caves; only in
small satchel looking bags with tiny drawstrings. 

If there is a God and He is giving us life that is too abundant for just ourselves, what does that mean for us?  It means that Christianity must be based around interaction with others.

When we are fully taken care of, there is no longer a need to search for life.  We are in fact given the life that we've always been searching for.  So then, where do we turn our attention when we turn away from ourselves?  There can only be two answers; God and other people.  

Relationship with God is God moving us and us moving God.  This is where we receive the life that allows us the freedom from the rat race of survival.  With God, we survive, we thrive, we win.  And more.  Relationship with others is where we turn next.  Since we no longer have a need to find life for ourselves, we seek out those who are in death and bring the life to them.

The crazy part is that we are all in that death, Christians or otherwise.  This is why we need community.  We receive life, offer it to those who need it, and have it returned to us when we squander it.  This process occurs over, and over, and over.  This is what Christian community looks like.  It's the shiny stuff.  And it is only found in dangerous places, because the hearts of people are wrought with peril.

The temptation is to seek out life from a source without being in community with it.  But store bought salvation is only good for looking nice in your box.  It isn't really yours.  Real life comes from the caves and quarries and other dangerous places of life.  If you stay away from danger, the shiny stuff you'll have will be as fake as the rest of you.  And you'll never have enough.          

Me, the Sermon, or Running Despite My Self

Strange things happen to me when I run.  I've been shot with a pellet gun, hit on by fourteen year olds, and chased by dogs.  All in the last month.  I consider the stuff that happens while I run to be a spiritual gift.  Because it's different from "the norm".

You should know that I hate running.  It's difficult and makes me feel unpleasant.  And right now it's cold.  Often, I'll get to my front door in my shorts and just think about running for a while.  Because really there are lots of reasons why I shouldn't run.  One of my favorite excuses is school work, which, if you didn't know, is best complimented by a sleeve of Oreos.

If my rationalizations fail, I hit the streets.  The first thing I notice is the awkwardness of my shadow.  "I look like that?"  Yes.  I look stupid.  It's okay though, as I conclude that everyone looks stupid when they run.  Next come the cramps.  First in my left shoulder, then in my stomach if I had eaten in the last four hours.  I shake those off and then it's my legs burning.  Before I can think about how bad I feel, I become acutely aware of my breath and wonder why it's so heavy at this point in the run.  This is about the time I realize that I've only been running for five minutes.

One of the best things about running on a foggy day is that you never know what's coming.  This is especially true when you hear a woman's voice singing in German that is slowly growing louder.  It's even truer when you realize that the woman in question is sitting in a cart being pulled by a miniature pony.  When it's foggy, I'm not thinking of how I'm feeling; Im excited and anticipated.  Because something's coming.

Miniature ponies in the fog, the pellet the hits you in the back as you see the blue SUV drive away, and the dogs that seem to hate accelerated moving are all important to me.  Because the thing I'm most concerned with when I'm running is me.  When I turn the corner only to find that a frisbee is coming straight toward my face, it puts me back in the fog.  I'm excited and anticipated.  At that point, my world is more than just me.