Lent and Facebook.

I've never understood lent. My church has never done it and I don't think I heard about I was into my teenage years. But, what I do understand about lent is that you're supposed to give up something for 40 days and focus on God. I kinda look at it like fasting. Do you normally eat? Yes. Well, give that up for a little and use that time for you and God instead.

What else I don't get is people giving up Facebook and Twitter for lent. I'm not entirely sure why - they both fit into any kind of restricting factor I try to use to describe lent (...give up something you like, ...give up something you spend a lot of time on, etc.). But here's what I think it is:

Go back to the analogy of fasting. If you over-indulge on food, then is fasting the only solution you should be seeking? Should you go straight from gluttony into a fast and then back to gluttony when you're done? No, of course not. You need to fix the issue of over-indulgence. In the same way, I feel like the people who give up Facebook for lent are only addressing the issue for a small portion of time - they haven't gotten to the heart of it. Maybe they need to consider spending less time on it regularly if it's big enough to give up for lent. Otherwise, come Easter, they'll be back on Crackbook creepin' hard on all of their friends. And it'll probably even be worse for a bit while they try to catch up on everything that's happened.

A trust fall.

Remember doing trust falls in junior high? You have someone stand behind you to catch you as you fall backwards. You put whether you'll have bodily harm in the hands of one of your friends.

I feel like I'm doing that.

I feel like God wants me to go to Jamaica, but I'm not seeing where the money is coming from. I've barely gotten anything so far. I'm doing that trust fall and I feel like the ground is rushing towards me at breakneck speed. But I'm not sticking my leg back - I'm trusting God to come through and catch me before I hit my head.

It's definitely nerve-racking.

The Curse of Cain. The Curse of Ham.

In Genesis 4, Cain is cursed for killing his brother. The curse is that no matter what he puts into working his crops, he will yield nothing. He must live as a "restless wanderer". More interesting, though, is that he complains he will be instantly killed when anyone sees him. So, God puts a "mark" on him so that every man will know not to harm Cain. There is great debate over what this mark is, but one theory is black skin.

This is further supported by the curse of Ham. The curse of Ham can be found in Genesis 9:20-27. Ham sees his father naked and when he father finds out, he curses Ham to be a servant to his brothers.

Note that I did not just make a biblical argument for slavery. I am sharing something I've heard. I don't agree with it, but I find it interesting and thought provoking.

People I don't like.

I don't like some people. They get on my nerves. I don't know how they do it, but within mere minutes of being around them, I just want to strangle them.

How do I handle this? I avoid them. I try to hang out with them as little as possible and minimize the amount of interaction we have when I must be around them.

Is that healthy? Maybe. Maybe not.

Should I be so opposed to being around them? No. As a Christian, I should try my best to imitate Christ and a large part of that is love. "Love your neighbor as yourself." I love myself. I'm going to post about that soon. But I don't love my neighbors anywhere near as much.

But, here's my real dilemma: I don't feel like I can change how I feel about them. So, is it better to avoid them or not avoid them and then have them see me as a very poor representation of Christ?

Desensitized?

In one of my classes, we've read a lot about slaves in America and their struggles. We did reading on our own and then discussed the text in class. I found the stories interesting and thought-provoking. But, as other people started talking about what surprised them in the stories, many of them described these feelings of disgust they had. I had no such experience.

I skimmed back over the readings to see if I just wasn't paying attention and missed some horrifically graphic event and found none. There were things that I don't like and never want to see in person, but reading about them didn't turn my stomach inside out.

Once I started thinking about it, I feel this way about a lot of things. The other day, my brother showed me a video of a guy getting electrocuted. Again, I didn't like it, but it didn't really affect me.

Lots of people have talked about how you become desensitized to things when you're exposed to the often enough. Have I been exposed to enough violence and injustice that I lack a proper reaction? Or are the things I am exposed to not that revolting, others are just overreacting?

An even deeper question is whether being desensitized is bad. Should it make my stomach turn or should I be able to handle myself? I don't know.

Perspectives.

Even in this blog post, there are different perspectives. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to title this "Perspectives" or "Different views on the same thing." They're always multiple ways to see something.

This has become quite apparent to me recently. And not just in that there are different ways to see something, but moreso a realization that the people who are close to me are very likely to have different ways to see things. And it may seem obviously, but the way you see something really depends on where you are.

I can be decisive, and I am always pretty stubborn. And I see things through that lens. I figure out where I see something going, or at least where I want it to go, and I'm set. That's how it's going to work out. I do that with schedules, relationships, everything. But, guess what? Not everyone sees what I do. Not everyone wants the same thing I do. So, what I have decided on oftentimes isn't what ends up being. That's hard for me to deal with.

In realizing this, I am trying to live in the moment as much as possible. Forget projection and planning and live now. Because it isn't worth it to miss out on the now so I can be devastated that my plan didn't work out later. I've known that for a while and have been working on it, and while I certainly do better than I have in the past, I can do better.

Worse is trying to find a balance between now and later. I need to plan some things. I need to figure out my major. I need to plan for summer and submit applications. It's just hard to limit myself.

I feel like this is a complete "duh" kind of post. Sometimes I can be really dense. REALLY dense. And it takes a lot for things to dawn on me.

P.S. - This also applies to time and God. I read a post on Stuff Christians Like that talked about how people try to view time as a healer for our sins. And he poses a thought: maybe God doesn't view time as we do. Maybe it's just like a four year-old who sees all of the past as yesterday and just the past. The length of time between when we last sinned or last did anything doesn't matter. It's the past. What matters is the now. I found it interesting and thought provoking.

Just what I needed.

Wow. I am amazed at how things always seem to fall together perfectly. Maybe I look into it too much sometimes, but I don't think I always am. I hate it when people attribute everything to God. And I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just that when you had a flat tire and that guy stopped to give you a ride, it could just be some guy thought it would be nice to help you out. It wasn't necessarily God. I say that because I feel like I might be falling into that category, but I'm not. I honestly believe that there are things spoken to me by God at just the right moment. Things that get me right where I am.

Tonight, this is that thing:

"You are amazing. You are intelligent and wondrous. Everything about you makes me smile. Please, don't ever make me lose you. Stay with me forever; I'll care for you. I will always be here for you to run to. I will forever be cheering you on. To me, your beauty will never fade. You'll never disappoint me too much. You can trust me, I promise. I am so proud to call you Mine. What a delight you have been to me. My heart swells each time I look at you. You need never worry that I'll grow tired of you or cast you aside like an old book. I love you. I love you so, so much. You can't even imagine how much - you really can't! Please believe me. Please love me. Please...let me hold you close. I know you're tired. I know this is too much. I know your agony. Just lay down your head, and I'll lift up your soul."

A cohesive post about change?

Yesterday, I had this great idea about this post I would write today. I should've written it down. Cause I really have no idea what it was. So this is all you get.

I tend to conform.

So this is my first post.

Why do I even have a 'first post' though? Well, it seems a lot of people I know are ending up with blogs recently. Even my girlfriend has one. And hers was what really gave me the idea for mine. See, hers is private. And that's what's been stopping me from getting a blog - I don't really want people to read my thoughts. But, if you can make it private, why not?

I don't have much to talk about right now. I probably will later. But I just need to get this first post out of the way.