coffee in the morning

the best morning is when you have lots to do but nothing scheduled and you wake up at a time that not too late and it’s not too early. the time is just right for you to make coffee and to come and sit at your desk and write about what time it is without actually telling anyone what the time really is. and then you sit here and although the ‘to-do’ list is long and although you should be being productive, you aren’t. and you not feeling guilty about it either.

yes, these are the best mornings and mornings like these make me happy to be a penniless student, sipping on my cup of cup of alta-rica. deciding whether i should study, read a book, play the guitar or make another cup of alters. nothing is imperative and so indecision is mandatory, even welcomed.

and so i start today, cognizant of the fact that nearly the whole population is jealous of me right now as they scoot off to work and start the last day of the week. i don’t mind if people are jealous- it validates my smugness.

insights into my father's heart

so this morning i was reading that parable in Matthew 21 entitled ‘Story of the Two Sons’. although i am familiar with the story I think the story meant something more to me in light of what I have been going through with God recently.

in about november last year i started reading the book i have just recently reviewed- ‘disappointment with God’ by yancey- and the book really gave me new and fresh insight into God as a father, and how often his ‘angry speeches’ through his prophets are showing us his stark disappointment mixed with his intense desire for us to get stuff right. kinda like when a dad gets frustrated with his kid who just keeps getting stuff wrong even though the dad is giving him all the opportunities for the son to get it right. sure, the dad gets upset, but he’s not even close to giving up on the kid.

so that was one part of it. the next part of it was yesterday. i was having coffee with a friend at mugg and bean. and we got chatting about the hard stuff about our faith, and how we are battling to get certain stuff right after years of sincere effort. and my friend leaned back in his chair and said a little pearl of wisdom that i will take with me throughout my life: ‘you know, carl, i think God enjoys our humanness.’ that was a fresh thought to me... i thought the only part of me God enjoyed was the part that got stuff right. i know i have to be careful with this thought and even as i write this i am not sure quite how far to take it, but i do reckon that an earthly dad doesn’t mind mistakes. after-all, it’s his child and children make mistakes.

(i’m not by any means saying that our striving for purity should decrease- but rather that our perception of how God sees us after we stuff up might need adjusting- isn’t it a broken spirit that pleases God?) but i don’t want to get too far off the point here.

and then the last part of the story had to do with reading that parable this morning. it’s about 2 sons who asks them to go work in the field. the first says ‘no’ to his dad but later went to work, and the second said ‘yes’ to his father but then never went. the question is asked: ‘which son was obeying their father?’... although there are many things to discuss in this story, the only one that i saw this morning is the heart of a father. he wants obedience. it pleases him. and the greatest tragedy of the second son seems to not to be his lack of integrity but rather the fact that he didn’t please his dad.

I think that is why the bible draws so many lessons from the fact that God is our spiritual father... it’s so that when i’m not sure how to handle myself spiritually and when i’m keen to run, the only place God wants me to run to is toward him.

criticism

hey, if i was reading this post and someone else had written it, i would think it was terrible. but because it’s me writing it and this is my idea, i quite like how short it is. also it’s hidden message- i like that too. you probably don’t, but then again, that is the point of it...

diffusion

so i made a cup of tea for myself this morning. i watched how the hot water slowly changed colour as the tea-bag fulfilled it’s purpose. and it got me thinking about God, and about when he’s in my day he changes the colour of it. he diffuses into me and i taste better than hot water...

Book Review- Disappointment With God (Philip Yancey)

So I have just finished reading a book that has taken months to finish. It has not taken months because it is boring. It took a long time because it is a difficult book to read and is abundant in difficult conceptual ideas that take time and effort to process. Most of Yancey’s works are intellectual, but I found this one to be his most challenging read thus far.

‘Disappointment with God’ attempts to answer the following three questions:
1. Is God fair?
2. Is God silent?
3. Is God hidden?

To this end, the book is a must-read. I have never had these questions so well answered, and his wise and calculated answers I will carry with me through life. Yancey does something very interesting and for a large part of the book, turns the tables and writes on what it might be like to be God, and even on God’s disappointment with man. This revealed to me God through history and certainly gave me a greater (even poetic) understanding of God, my father, the lover of my soul. Along the way, my desire to read the Old Testament prophets peaked and I started to appreciate new things in books like Isaiah and Lamentations. At one point in time, the book even became very intellectual in a scientific way and discussed the linearity of time and time and it’s relativity and what that means to us and to God.

In true Yancey fashion he explores all angles of an argument (even ‘disappointment without God’) often throwing himself in the deep water of the argument and writing his way back out onto solid ground.

Yancey, my hero.

the road home

in 2004 and 2005, i was involved with an organisation called j-life. we were based on a farm outside heidelberg called camp eden. it was during these two years that my faith in the Lord Jesus was cemented and when i made much personal progress and started taking concepts such leadership and devotion seriously. God worked wonders in my life.

whenever i come back to the campsite i am always excited to be in this place of memories and to a place when somehow God seems more available to me even though it’s probably me being more available to him.

the farm house is at the end of a 9km dirt road. whenever i drive the road it is different. there are always new tracks being formed and new holes in the ground that were never there before. sometimes when it has been raining, it is a very slushy drive. other times when it has been sunny, it can be a very bumpy ride. but every time is different.

it’s like my path to God is always different. Or it’s like God’s path to me is always different. There are always new ways to enjoy the company of my Father. There are always new discoveries that await me.

the road is not generic, but the road leads to God and i know where the road starts...

James 4:8... ‘come near to God and he will come near to you.’

offline

Even though technology so often works so well for us, we often find that sometimes it is able to work against us... and when it is working against us, we find that it can be rather effective at totally de-railing us. Sometimes I feel as though technology has built a highway over a dirt-road and that’s all smooth-driving until the introduction of tarmac means pot-holes, when before potholes were never a problem. So right now my internet is down- as you may have guessed from my very revealing title of this post. But an even greater tragedy than an offline connection is that fact that I don’t even need to be online. Technology has created a need that technology can’t satisfy. Now to catch the next train to somewhere I’m not planning on going...