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elections are a-comin' (5/3)
JORDAN! | | |
| At Celebration on Sunday, which is Southport Pres Sunday school, Paul G commented on Jesus' last words, which can be found in Matthew 27 as "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Knowing Jewish culture is one of the keys to understanding scripture that most of us will never have the opporutunity to know. Paulg happened to find a neat insight into Jewish culture. A little background is that, if you don't know, Jews, as children in school, memorize scripture at a bare minimum the first five books of the Bible, and some as much as the whole Old Testament. So, the point is that the Jews love their scripture memorization. This is what Paulg discovered: Jesus, being the good Scripture memorizing Jew that he was, was actually quoting scripture when he said "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me." Apparently, in Jewish culture, because they knew all the Psalms, it was customary to quote the first line of a Psalm to express the whole Psalm.
So, this is Psalm 22, which Jesus quotes on the cross (which is pretty darn cool if ya ask me)
Psalm 22
1 My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?
Why are You so far from helping Me,
And from the words of My groaning?
2 O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear;
And in the night season, and am not silent.
3 But You are holy,
Enthroned in the praises of Israel.
4 Our fathers trusted in You;
They trusted, and You delivered them.
5 They cried to You, and were delivered;
They trusted in You, and were not ashamed.
6 But I am a worm, and no man;
A reproach of men, and despised by the people.
7 All those who see Me ridicule Me;
They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
8 “He trusted[b] in the LORD, let Him rescue Him;
Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!”
9 But You are He who took Me out of the womb;
You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts.
10 I was cast upon You from birth.
From My mother’s womb
You have been My God.
11 Be not far from Me,
For trouble is near;
For there is none to help.
12 Many bulls have surrounded Me;
Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled Me.
13 They gape at Me with their mouths,
Like a raging and roaring lion.
14 I am poured out like water,
And all My bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax;
It has melted within Me.
15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
And My tongue clings to My jaws;
You have brought Me to the dust of death.
16 For dogs have surrounded Me;
The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me.
They pierced[c] My hands and My feet;
17 I can count all My bones.
They look and stare at Me.
18 They divide My garments among them,
And for My clothing they cast lots.
19 But You, O LORD, do not be far from Me;
O My Strength, hasten to help Me!
20 Deliver Me from the sword,
My precious life from the power of the dog.
21 Save Me from the lion’s mouth
And from the horns of the wild oxen!
You have answered Me.
22 I will declare Your name to My brethren;
In the midst of the assembly I will praise You.
23 You who fear the LORD, praise Him!
All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him,
And fear Him, all you offspring of Israel!
24 For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;
Nor has He hidden His face from Him;
But when He cried to Him, He heard.
25 My praise shall be of You in the great assembly;
I will pay My vows before those who fear Him.
26 The poor shall eat and be satisfied;
Those who seek Him will praise the LORD.
Let your heart live forever!
27 All the ends of the world
Shall remember and turn to the LORD,
And all the families of the nations
Shall worship before You.[d]
28 For the kingdom is the LORD’s,
And He rules over the nations.
29 All the prosperous of the earth
Shall eat and worship;
All those who go down to the dust
Shall bow before Him,
Even he who cannot keep himself alive.
30 A posterity shall serve Him.
It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation,
31 They will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born,
That He has done this.
And the last line in The Message Bible says it as
31Babies not yet conceived
will hear the good news--
that God does what he says.
JORDAN! | | |
| Alabama was a mission trip more special to me than any other thus far. I don't think this has anything to do with the place or even the people (although both help tremendously). It has everything to do with how I interact with God. I wasn't feeling the greatest, due to coldage, the whole week, and therefore was not up for much talking, which is a miracle in itself. It felt good to not be obligated to talk or entertain, and yet I felt more satisfied and content than usual. I have been seeking out God in a way that I can have a constant faith irrelevent of emotions or feelings, because afterall thats not the point. I want to trudge through even when I don't "feel" God in my quiet time, or if I am merely physically ill.
I heard this phrase used with Neil Kjeldson after his senior year at Morris Fork and it has sort of stuck with me. Jacqui or Paul said at the debriefing that he or she felt that Neil finally did not get in the way of himself. I've always envied the understanding of this, because I felt as though I had myself, gotten in the way of myself. With this quietness and more understandingness, I enjoyed people as people much more because I wasn't talking as much.
I obviously love to "get on a roll" in a group of people to entertain and cause much laughter, with which there is nothing wrong, supposing motives are correct. Being a bit disabled socially, I grew closer to a lot to people I wouldn't had otherwise. I went into the week wanting to learn how to see people with God's perspective. Being a people person, ironically enough, I often miss seeing the humanity in people, if that makes sense. I love people, but I now even more love seeing their humanity. My last entry expressed my desire to love faults, and I feel that God has expounded on that. Instead of being annoyed by people, I'm being filled with a spirit of empathy. I'm just beginning to see where people are coming from more often. I am also beginning to regain a value for relationships.
Listening is a brilliant thing, but it's so much more than not talking and hearing. It's listening to people's whole selves and I miss that point all too often because of my selfish ambitions. I may seem mellow lately, but I'm actually content and learning to slow down.
more later? (it is called alabama one after all)
JORDAN!
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| I watched Annie Hall tonight and it is most certainly one of the better movies I've seen. Aside from the humor, which I lurve, the general message of embracing the imperfections of everything is rather introspective. The movie is largely autobiographical for Woody Allen, a brilliant director I might add. It goes through his course of oddball relationships with women and more specifically the Annie Hall. The relationship starts off awkward with a sort of immature love at first site high school romance and eventually they progress to a point like married couples that argue all the time. Now, the thing is, it isn't the bitter type of arguing; it's the kind of arguing that is merely existent to point out the beauty in imperfection. I'm not sure how to describe it. It's something we've all experienced or seen, but cannot really describe through words. It must be shown. The movie is obviously, if you've seen it or simply read my Xanga, not exactly the life of a man based off the fundamentalist Christian ethics. As a matter of fact he's quite Jewish. As Jewish as they come. (Which is the butt of many self-inflicted jokes in the movie.) I've always been an advocate of finding truth through things which aren't blatantly "Christian" as I might label them. While there exists sin and basically garbage in relationships, "Christian" or not, the idea of love is a universal one. I obviously realize that it comes from God, but others may not. Although rare, love can sometimes be displayed by those who are not necessarily "following Christ."
Following the film, my mother commented on how it was sad because it reminded her of the relationship between my father and her. While they simply hated the little certain annoyances they gave each other, those imperfections were exactly what made that kind of love special. Not only a matter of standing instances, but embracing them because those are the things that one loves about another, not the things that are perfect. God is described by Rob Bell in a Nooma video as loving in a way that he would be crushed if we, after a difficult or struggling situation, turn to God after the resolution in despair as to why he would let us go through that. It was during those times of our sin, our falling, our humanity, that we were closest to Him because he got to be the Hero that rescued us. As Jesus said, he didn't come for the perfect, he came for the junk. God loves us when he sees us struggling because it is when we are trying our hardest to search out God and it is when God can be seen most easily in our lives. I want to love people like this.
I want to love in a way that I don't shun or merely bare the hurts people have caused me or the sins they have caused themselves, but I want to love them BECAUSE of that uniqueness and the fact that they are striving to seek out God just as I am. I want to love imperfection, because it is so much more real than perfection.
JORDAN! | | |
| This is what I've been waiting for, for those of you who didn't know.
Dad,
I just wanted to tell you that I love you. It has been hard at times, but I love you anyway, aside from emotion or circumstance. I want to you to know that I forgive you for anything you have done and for anything you have yet to do. And it is not because I have to or because I feel obligated to, because if that was the case, then I would have forgiven you a long time ago. I'm forgiving you because you are Dad and I love you. I also want you to realize that I am not loving you because I want you to love God or because I want you to go to church. That is not my intention, because I want to love you without an agenda. In a year or so, I will most likely be leaving home for college and I don't want to lose you, my Dad. I feel like I have tried to make you change by withholding love from you and I'm sorry for that. The only thing that will heal our relationship is if we love each other and hold nothing back. Although you and Mom feel as though you have failed miserably as parents, you must have done something right, because somehow I know that love is unconditional. As parents love their children apart from mistakes, I am old enough now to love back in a way that cannot be explained. I hope that I can love you like Jesus, with all of your flaws and screw ups, because they are irrelevant to me.
I love you Dad,
Jordan
So, there it is...
JORDAN! | | |
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