You know something that's crazy to me? The fact that I am not the center of the universe. Yes, this is absolutely absurd.
The world makes so much sense to me when I'm the center of it though. Donald Miller made a great comparison of life being like a movie. When I am standing in a room, my eyes are the cameras, my ears the microphones, and everyone around me are actors. When I walk out of the room, the action happening shifts from inside the room to wherever I happen to be walking. That would make sense right? It's my movie, my cameras are capturing a new scene with new actors; the actors in the previous room are now unimportant and I'm the star. Everything changes when I want it to, and only people that I want to be in my movie are in it.
No, this is ridiculous. That's obviously not how it works, but it's funny how little we really think about other people.
Just driving to school, I probably pass a hundred or so cars on the opposite side of the road. Every single one of those cars has at least one person in it, and each individual person has an entire life completely separate from mine. A single person in a single other car has a whole set of friends, problems, sorrows, jokes, responsibilities, and privileges that I am completely unaware of, and I pass by this car in less than a second. To this person, their life is the movie... their friends are the actors, their eyes the cameras and their ears the microphones. And I... I hardly even made the cut to be an extra in their movie; they probably didn't even notice me through my windshield. And this is only one person in one car out of the countless hundreds of thousands of cars on the road.
What inspired this post was actually my boredom; in my boredom I clicked the "next blog" button at the top of the page. I was directed to the blog of a mother whose husband was having knee surgery, child was having bronchitis, and dog had just become paralyzed. She detailed these events and talked about the emotional pain she went through during these events.
I wouldn't have even known this woman existed had I not clicked the next button on this website. This woman who has her own set of friends, her own social circles, her own problems, her own beliefs... and I could've easily just let her existence slip right by without even noticing.
Maybe it's time, as christians, that we truly get our eyes off ourselves, that we stop caring about our movies and go out and make other peoples' better.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Psalm 34:7
Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart
Psalm 34:7
---
So... if I delight myself in the Lord, truly delight myself in all that he is, and my heart desires a Ferrari 599 GTO, then sometime in the near future a delivery truck better be stopping by my house, right? That's how that works, right?
This really seems like the reasoning that people use when they approach this verse. "If I delight in the Lord and I desire 'X', then I will receive 'X'. Now, obviously, this isn't the way it works; this became obvious to me when a shiny red Ferrari 599 GTO failed to show up on my doorstep at age 12. So if we know this isn't what the verse means, that we aren't really going to receive everything our heart desires, what does this verse mean?
That's what I was wondering the other day, when a different interpretation of the verse hit me.
The cause and effect nature of the verse is exactly how everyone thinks it is (if x then y) but people seem to mix up the last words, or at least the meaning of the last words. "He will give you what your heart desires" and "He will give you the desires of your heart" are two totally different ideas. The former would lead us to interpret that if we delight in the Lord, he will give us what we already desire (like my Ferrari). However, the latter leads to a different conclusion entirely. God won't give us what our heart already desires, he will change those desires to reflect His character. Just like the verse says, He will give you the desires of your heart. He won't grant the wishes that your selfish, fallen heart wants; instead, He gives you new desires. He gives you new desires that take the place of the old ones in your heart.
Throughout my life (short as it may be) I've noticed that whenever I truly am delighting in the Lord, it seems natural to follow His commandments; I want to please Him, I want to desire what He desires. I haven't noticed it, but it's the promise in Pslam 34 showing itself in my life. However, when I fall away from the Lord and am not delighting in Him, my selfish desires return.
Just thought it was kinda interesting that such a simple sentence could be taken out of context so easily.
Psalm 34:7
---
So... if I delight myself in the Lord, truly delight myself in all that he is, and my heart desires a Ferrari 599 GTO, then sometime in the near future a delivery truck better be stopping by my house, right? That's how that works, right?
This really seems like the reasoning that people use when they approach this verse. "If I delight in the Lord and I desire 'X', then I will receive 'X'. Now, obviously, this isn't the way it works; this became obvious to me when a shiny red Ferrari 599 GTO failed to show up on my doorstep at age 12. So if we know this isn't what the verse means, that we aren't really going to receive everything our heart desires, what does this verse mean?
That's what I was wondering the other day, when a different interpretation of the verse hit me.
The cause and effect nature of the verse is exactly how everyone thinks it is (if x then y) but people seem to mix up the last words, or at least the meaning of the last words. "He will give you what your heart desires" and "He will give you the desires of your heart" are two totally different ideas. The former would lead us to interpret that if we delight in the Lord, he will give us what we already desire (like my Ferrari). However, the latter leads to a different conclusion entirely. God won't give us what our heart already desires, he will change those desires to reflect His character. Just like the verse says, He will give you the desires of your heart. He won't grant the wishes that your selfish, fallen heart wants; instead, He gives you new desires. He gives you new desires that take the place of the old ones in your heart.
Throughout my life (short as it may be) I've noticed that whenever I truly am delighting in the Lord, it seems natural to follow His commandments; I want to please Him, I want to desire what He desires. I haven't noticed it, but it's the promise in Pslam 34 showing itself in my life. However, when I fall away from the Lord and am not delighting in Him, my selfish desires return.
Just thought it was kinda interesting that such a simple sentence could be taken out of context so easily.
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