My Feet Are Strong

One night while camping, I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I saw the words "My Feet Are Strong" craved into the wall of a bathroom in Yosemite Valley. I am not sure what they actually mean, but to me it was slightly inspiring. Inspiring might be taking it a little too far, one might be thinking, it is just writing on the walls. But for me, as I looked at it, I could not help to think about what I was going to be doing the next day. Summiting a peak at 8,000ish feet on a hike that would be a total of 17 miles. It would be a long day. I thought about the last summit I did, and the failure of it. Its not that I did not make it, its that I left my mind behind. I was mentally not strong enough and was in a sour mood the entire time. (Sour is a nice way to put it) My feet were strong enough to carry me to the top but my mind was lagging behind me, struggling to keep up. I think that is why we are "strong in the power of His might." Because our might can get us to the top, or in some cases, almost to the top, but we dont thrive when we make it. We seem to be falling apart gasping for air and rest at the top. But in His might, we continue on with and are able to thrive to our end goal/position, its not my power but his. My feet are strong, but can only do so much.

Celebrating Life

Today I was snowed in. I was unable to leave my campus unless i walked through the snow somewhere. Unfortunately, there are not many places within walking distance. So I stayed on campus. Today is Sunday, and I go to church on Sundays. So as you probably put together, I could not go to church. My RD decided to have our own little church service in one of our community rooms. after a few fun songs of praise, my RD gave a small sermon. It was the idea that we don't always seem to celebrate life. It was interesting because I began to think about that, and I would have to say that we do not always celebrate our lives. Jesus did. He was at so many parties that people began to ask him why he ate and drank so much! He was celebrating. He loved life. He rose two children from the dead that the may enjoy their lives. My RD talked about enjoying life, and that children seem to know how to celebrate life. Jesus said we are supposed to be child like when it comes to our faith, could that mean also that we should enjoy ourselves? After a short moment of speaking, my RD said that we are going to celebrate life today and go play like children in the snow. There were smiles on everyone's faces. In our play time we played together as a community and celebrated life together. It was one of the best church services I have ever been to. And deeply spiritual, whether some people realized it or not.

10 Commandments - Honoring the daddy and mommy

In some recent studies I have been going through the 10 commandments. I have been thinking about their significance, how they were received by the people, why they are separated from the rest of the commandments and laws that God gives to Moses. I've thought of whether there is a difference that they are called commandments rather than laws? (maybe that a law is something you can break and have consequences for such actions and a commandment is something that is simply done without question)So I have decided to further my studies and talk about what I have learned and found about these commandments.
Lets get the cliche`s out of the way first. The Ten Commandments were written on two stone tablets according Deuteronomy 5, but not in the way we probably think. It was most likely to be written out fully with all the explanations and rewards that came with certain commands. They were not written five on one tablet and 5 on the other split perfectly evenly. It is actually thought to possibly have been written on a stone tablet that is similar to a cylinder that one would roll over to continue reading; that is interesting.
For this post, I am going to skip a middle commandment and talk about the fifth commandment, Honoring the father and the mother. This commandment actually has reasoning behind it. "Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you." (Deut. 5:16) God says to do it in order for you to have long days. That sounds pretty good, I know that some times there does not seem to be enough time in the day to get all I need to get done done. But what I want to go about is the idea of how people teach this commandment. Whenever people read this verse they always seem to relate it to children, that children need to respect their parents, do what they say without questioning, meaning to eat their vegetables and clean their rooms without complaining. But if one would take time to think about the situation of who the commandments were being told to, we might not think of this commandment as for children. When Moses was telling the children of Israel, he was speaking to the adults, not specifically the children. He was not speaking to the 18 and under group and say this one is for you from God, he just said it to everyone. Now what does this commandment mean to those who are living out of their house with families of their own? How are they supposed to Honor their fathers and mothers when they could be living across the state, country, or world? I think it means that there was a specific message that was going out to the people. A message of that was saying that parents are the ones that teach you what you know, they have the connection with God and lead you to that connection as well. I think also that Frederick Buechner has the idea when he says it does not even matter if you consider your parents to be "good," but to honor them because they gave you life when they did not have to. They might not deserve honor, or do anything honorable, but it commanded that we do so. If it is for nothing but an example for others that elders need to be honored, because their life paved a way for you to live. Or an example for the next generation or more specifically your children that they should treat you when reaching a older age with honor because that is what you showed them to do with your own parents. How do we honor? Well, to honor means to hold in high respect, to think highly of, to accept as valid and to confirm the request and demands of. That is a simple example of honoring, and not even I can say that I am completely honoring to any person really.
Honoring your father and mother has its benefits as the scripture clearly states being long days which are fulfilled in the land which God is giving you (I believe that the latter part "land God is giving you" is specific to the Israelites because he was moving them literally to land he was giving them, for modern people like ourselves, we can assume in our land, which is given by God anyways...). The thing is you have to honor first; you have to set the example of honoring for those around you, those under you and all you have never seen such honoring. God says to honor not for the benefit of the parents who receive the honor, but for those who give it. Maybe the father and mother are the ones who should be doing more honoring, so the children have an example.

What To Enjoy

I enjoy sitting reading a good book with some tea or coffee or sitting in the same room with a few of my good friends simply enjoying one another's company. I enjoy conversations that lead to deeper friendships or a change in a person's life or a challenge for my own life. I enjoy good food for dinner and playing an exciting game of Volley Pong after. I enjoy playing my guitar (named Ms. Abby) in my room, or lulling someone to sleep at night.
(I almost feel as though this introduction should be placed on a list of things I enjoy on eHarmony or another dating site...)
There are many things that I enjoy. I've been thinking lately about what I enjoy and do not enjoy. Its mostly the difference between work and play. I was reading about a man long ago who search in everything for joy. He wrote about his experiences, you can think of this as a sort of documentary about his endeavors or a memoir, I like to say he was blogging about his experiences before blogging even existed; the first blogger!. It is called Ecclesiastes if you are interested in reading it. The man's name was Solomon, (its pronounced Shlomo in the Hebrew language; slightly humorous) he was the king of the Israelites, who has been said to have more wisdom than any man before him and any that came after him. He inherited a kingdom at the peak of its existence from his father David. With his power as king, he sought to please himself. In his memoir, the two words that he write the most (or forms of it) are vanity and joy. I find it interesting that a man who is out seeking his own desires speaks so much vanity over what he did. There was much that he enjoyed, but it still was not completely pleasing. Sure he admits to enjoying a lot of it, but he still calls all of it vanity.
Despite all the vanity he did find good in his search for joy and pleasure. Solomon says over five times in his book, which for a book so short is like he is a train blowing his horn on and on again, a certain phrase that he considered good and enjoyable. "A man can do nothing better than eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This is a gift from God." This phrase is said over and over again accompanied with different ideas like: God allows those who please him to enjoy their toil, and those who do not please him are not allowed to enjoy it; God wants us to enjoy what we are doing so we do not worry about the future or complain about what may happen. Perhaps you are now finding this interesting too. Solomon, the wisest man ever to live, who spent his time seeking to please his desires, says there is nothing better to do than eat, drink and enjoy work? Do I enjoy my work? Maybe he meant that we should enjoy the fruit of our labor? (the PAYCHECK!) Either way it says that this joy we get is a gift from God...odd...because when God banished man from the Garden of Eden, he said he would be cursed by having to toil/work with the ground. Yet we are supposed to get joy out this curse? Somehow this curse has become a gift. I feel like this should be an idea from the New Testament, but its found in Ecclesiastes a book that may have been the first written in the Old Testament. It is sort of an odd concept though, that the gift from God is that we are able to find enjoyment in this curse. Maybe thats why its a gift? Maybe God knows that is exactly what we need in our lives, something that we enjoy. Work takes up most of our time, it doesn't seem like too bad of an idea to start enjoying it.

Cliche` Lines #1

This is a little series that I will be writing about on and off for a while. Tackling the sayings that we say so often to each other. I hope you enjoy it!

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder." I enjoy saying this to friends as we depart from one another for longer periods of time. It is a comforting feeling to think that even though we are leaving each other, the separation will somehow bring us closer. Yet so often, separation only separates. I would say it is more than half the time when a person leaves your life to go to another place for some reason, whether it be because of college, a job or relocating, That person is harder to keep in contact with. For different people, granted, communication is easy to keep with, but not always. I believe its the growth that happens in you and the one away from you that causes the divide. It is not that the person is no longer interested in being a friend, or being in your life, but they are living their own life. As we live our life we grow, and since we are apart, we grow apart, each experiences that do not cause us to hate each other but to gain interest that the other may not have, and to lose interest that we once shared. I believe that when you are away you do realize how much you think about them more, but growth (which is a good thing in every persons life, keeps them away. Absence does make the heart grow fonder of the person that left, but when they come back, they are not the same person.

Jealousy...

I must say that I have come to realize the power of jealousy. Not only through my experiences but through the experiences of others. There is so much to it than meets the eye. First jealousy can worsen if you allow it to stew inside you, especially when it comes to job opportunity and you are around the other person who was chosen over you often. A person may do their best to bury it and forget what happened and get along with the other person but there are factors that can bring it up again. Like when the appointed one rubs it in your face; or sometimes even worse, when the person does a sub-par job that you know without a doubt that you would have done better; or when you have to step up into their position and get a job done, and receive no gratitude, recognition or reward (not that those things are necessary, but they are given to the one with the title, not the one who did the work). Jealousy then leads to bitterness. Not matter how much you may actually like the other person, how good they are or what they do, it is difficult to be around them, to see them for who they are without harsh judgement. This is when it becomes deeply rooted inside and hurts your heart. Thats when the tears come. The wounds from bitterness are not easily removed and sting at any moment of their choosing. It hurts even more at the times when you know without a doubt that you not only deserved the opportunity, but would be doing a much better job and would have made things a lot better for everyone else if you were in there. Jealousy can cause you subconsciously to react in a negative fashion towards people. Jealousy is powerful, which is why God tells us in his commandments not to even desire anything of your neighbors. Anything at all. That is a difficult task, especially when it seems like God is being hypocritical on this topic. 11 times in the Bible it either call God jealous or He call Himself a jealous God. The one time it is mentioned in the New Testament tries to make it wholesome and says God is jealous with godly jealousy. This doesn't necessarily make sense as to why God says for us not to do something but does it himself. Seems like something a parent would do. Why does God have a double standard here? Why does God try to say that jealousy is ok? Why does God even get jealous? Wouldn't it seem that if we were jealous, we would be more like God who is too jealous? Am I trying to make my jealousy right, as God does, by asking these questions? I am not sure, but I have seen what jealousy has done to people and to myself at times and would agree with God that desiring something that another has is threatening to one's life. Maybe God learned that and decided to make a rule against it for our benefit, much like a parent would do.

Friends

I have friends. Not only does that confirm that I am not a lonely creeper who blogs every now and then, but it shows that I have a life and people enjoy being around me. I love my friends. I am on my way home from a weekend with my good friends that I am not able to see often because of my study abroad semester. Being with them this weekend lighten my heart and excited me for my return to them. I've known most of them for a little over a year, and I think the best part is seeing how much we have grown. There is much more maturity in our conversation; we, oddly, look older than before (maybe not myself I think, because I pretty much look the same.) Our concerns are of higher value, no longer caring as much for the things that occupied so much of our time but now focused on that which will improve ourselves and those around us. I sat down with a friend in her apartment. When I first met her, I thought she was immature and snobbish. (if you are reading this blog, sorry, it true but I still enjoyed being around you!) As we talked on her modern style black couch, I noticed she had grown. She was no longer the little girl that I first met, but closer to a adult woman. A different girl friend of mine, told me that we are mature adults and we should be acting a that way. I thought about that for a moment and say that though our age does qualify us as adults, I wouldn't say that we are in adulthood quite yet, but getting there. Back to my other friend on the couch, we talked about a few things had happened to her while I was gone, just simple life mostly. Though I knew about some of the matters, I got to hear what happened from the actual source. What I noticed in her words was her sense that she was learning from all that happened. She did not complain about her situation or gripe that she had to go through it all, but understood the situation and is using it to grow from it and even helping others who are going through the same type of issues. My friends are growing, like flowers in a garden. (forgive the corny analogy, but there is always truth in corniness.) I enjoy my friends, every moment i'm with them. Living life with the best people I can have around me; people that are learning, growing and loving, patient as we live life together. I love my friends.